We have a regular (weekly, usually) session of "get excited and make things". It's a fixed day and time of the week, and most of the time, one or several friends drop by. They bring their projects and we all sit together and work on our things - knitting, sewing, woodworking, paper-related stuff. There's been miniature painting and programming done, too, as well as the very mundane task of mending socks and darning clothes.

Last week, our meeting went on an outing - into the FabLab in Nuremberg. Just in case you have never heard about a FabLab, it's short for "fabrication laboratory". Usually, a fablab is an open workshop where you can make things, for a very small fee.

Most fablabs have a set of tools for mechanical and electronic stuff, a laser cutter, and a 3D printer. You might also find a large drill, a CNC machine, a sewing and/or embroidering machine, a few computers, and some other stuff. Plus a stash of materials you can buy for your projects.

So, last week, I sat at the FabLab, designing new whorls and a new flyer and new bobbins for my little Finnish spinning wheel. I got that wheel back in 2012, and it's been running with the roughly tweaked flyer and bobbins since. They do work, but they are a waste of space in the spinning assembly, since the flyer is huge and the bobbin is tiny. (The wheel seems to be called the Varpapuu Toika, and someone else was so nice as to post a video of it.)



As you can see, the flyer is... less than elegant. A waste of space, and energy, and I am going to replace it with a lighter one, with longer wings to accommodate a bigger bobbin. I'll space the hooks closer to each other too, and fit it with smaller whorls. Someone at the FabLab has offered me help with the metal axle, and the rest... I'll laser cut wooden parts for the bobbin ends and the flyer, probably drill holes through some leftover dowels for the bobbin cores, and the whorl bits will be 3D-printed. (3D-printing takes ages, AGES, so as I'm an impatient person and want several bobbins, I will just print the whorl disks.)

If you have a FabLab in your region - go check it out. They are fabulous!

How did the weekend pass so quickly? Is it really Monday again? Well, at least the overcast skies had the good grace to come today, not yesterday or Saturday, when we could enjoy some splendid weather, and I actually managed to get some gardening done.

Speaking of splendid - if you were thinking of moving to Stockholm, you might want to watch this ad video. Or if you like card tricks.



You can also get good coffee in Stockholm... I remember the first time I was in Scandinavia, I was totally amazed at the huge cups of really decent-to-totally-yummy coffee (with lots of milk) that you could get in any 7-11, or actually about anywere. Scandinavians run on coffee. Which seems to actually be healthy.

I didn't drink coffee until I was something in my twenties, when I slowly got fond of the taste, and now I do love a good cup of coffee, preferably with milk in it (lots of milk). A few years ago, we bought an Aeropress for our home, which is quick to use, makes lovely coffee, is easy to clean and does not take up much space. Like any German household, we have an electric water kettle to heat water anyway*, so it's one less appliance to find room and a socket for. Our coffee consumption, needless to say, has increased noticeably since introducing the Aeropress... small wonder.

Writing so much about coffee makes me want one. I think I will go have one now. Yum.

* The water kettle is about sixteen years old now, it would probably get totally jealous if we brought in another gadget that can heat water!

A few years ago, while I was still quite new at that freelancing stuff that I do, I was beating myself up because I felt that I was not getting enough work done during any given day. I chatted about that with a very good friend, lamenting my laziness and inefficiency and my general ineptness. And then she did something that changed my life - she told me about a study that had found out that in every normal day job, with its eight hours nominal work-time, the actual hours of actual work done every day, on average.... was four.

Four. That's about... half.

The rest? Lost in checking emails, nonessential phone calls, getting coffee, catching up with colleagues, whatever. (Possibly in nonessential, nonproductive meetings too.) Four hours, folks.

I took a deep breath and readjusted the expectations I had on myself to a healthier level, and one much more congruent with actual reality than before. I've thought of that ever since whenever there was a day that did not go as I had planned, and it has saved my sanity oh, uncountable times.

Some time later I heard about a study that had tested work times too, and found out that yes, you could make people work longer hours... but if you set them to work 40 or 42 hours per week, there was actually not getting more done than with 35 hours per week, because efficiency declined quickly enough to cancel the extra time out. Completely. (That's one of the reasons I try very hard not to work on weekends.)

Now, with the current project, I think I have found out what my personal ceiling on hours of actual work per day still sustainable over the medium-to-long run is. I will not share the exact number over the blog, as that's too personal and too much a part of my internal business reckonings, but you can probably guess that it is more than four and less than eight (I have .

Mind you - I am not saying that it is impossible to work much, much more for a day or a few days (that is called "managing a crisis" or "putting in an extra effort when necessary", or as another of my friends likes to call it "getting the cow off the ice"). I am also not saying that these four hours of average are the thing valid for every person, everywhere, every time. As the most patient of all husbands rightly pointed out to me, you can probably do more non-brainy, mildly taxing physical work in a day than deep thinking or stuff that requires much concentration.

What I try to say is that if you are a freelancer, do not think you will be able to work eight billable hours per day, any day and every day. You, too, will have a sustainable work hour ceiling, and it will most probably be less than eight (if not, you might be superhuman, and I might not want to know you). It's normal, and you are not alone. In fact, you are joined in this by the rest of humanity.
Of course you will be able to push through that ceiling when necessary (putting in an extra effort, see above). You might also be able to work more for a while. (That, however, is called "working too much", which should be followed by "getting some well-earned rest" and "doing normal hours again", or it will gradually slide over to being called "working yourself sick" and, if you really won't back off and care for yourself, "working yourself to death". I know people who worked themselves sick, more than one. You don't want that. Trust me.)

That's it. Now I will get coffee and try to hit my sustainable maximum number of work hours per day again, today. Chances are good.

Oh, and dear friend who once gave me that life-changing bit of information (and who also supplies me with socks sometimes, but probably does not read this blog)? Thank you. Thank you so much.

I'm still sewing (a lot), and I'm still behind on what I had intended to keep as a schedule (mostly due to a much-needed desk day, taking care of some paperwork stuff inbetween). There is progress... but not yet enough to make me breathe freely again.

It was clear from the beginning that this project would be a tight schedule, so at least I'm not surprised. The therefore also unsurprising lack of photos which I promised you, repeatedly, is to blame on the lack of time that I have. Taking photos doesn't take long, basically - but usually turns out to take longer than intended, and I currently don't feel like taking that "risk".

While I am sewing happily along, I'm listening to stuff. To be more precise: to podcasts. Especially nice, in my opinion: I get to listen to stories, in addition to listening to all that other stuff that I have (from Kickstarters, for example) and never gotten around to immersing myself into it. If you are looking for stories, you might want to check out EscapePod and PodCastle, both posting stories every week or so. I'm also thinking about checking out one or a few knitting podcasts, but haven't gotten around to checking these out yet.

For those of you more interested in medieval cooking, two cookbooks (the oldest ones in Britain so far) are mentioned over on the Medieval Manuscripts blog (the catalogue is updated again).

I am really looking forward to having this project all off my hands some time around Easter - the next sewing project in line comes, fortunately, with a kinder schedule, and I will have some time inbetween to take care of the other (not less exciting things) that are piling up here. (There will be hand-made needles in my shop, some day in the future. And beautiful, carbon-steel scissors without the ubiquitous nickel-plating, and closely resembling medieval finds in their shape.)

While sitting and sewing, finishing an article, working on a book project and trying to finish knitting a project I want to have on the table, together with a for-sale pattern at LonCon, I have also been doing research about early medieval garments (again). And part of this was done with help of a manuscript with lots and lots of illuminations - the "Stuttgarter Psalter".

It's from the first half of the 9th century, originates from Saint-Germain-des-Près, and currently hangs out in the collection of the library in Stuttgart. Where, praised be digitisation, it has been fully digitised and can now also hang out on your screen, if you follow this link. (Hint: If you should happen to need to download one of the pages at full resolution, zoom in a little bit before you hit "save this image" - that gives you the big one instead of the smaller non-zoomed preview. Smart, smart programmers.)

Should you prefer your manuscripts from the second half of the tenth century in Britain, however, you might want to check out this blog post instead. Or go straight to BL Add MS 49598.

It's been almost a year now since I discovered HabitRPG, which I posted about back in February 2013. (For those of you who missed that first post and are too lazy to click the link, it's a to-do list with integrated life gamification. You have a little avatar that gains gold and experience for every task you do, whether one-off or recurring, and can die if you miss too many recurring tasks. Like a roleplaying character, it will level up when there's enough experience amassed, and the gold can be used to buy either in-game rewards like equipment, or buy permission to treat yourself to some real-life rewards, like the book you wanted, or having coffee with friends, or whatever you set for yourself at whatever gold price suits you.)

That was not the first planning gadget I had tried, but contrary to my expectations, I did actually stick with it and did not drop out after a week or two, or even half a year. My to-do list is still quite long, and some items stay on it nauseatingly long, but I do have the feeling that I am getting more done overall.

Habit is especially useful, for me, in keeping track of recurring tasks such as book-keeping (and you faithful readers will know exactly how much I love that task), but also small everyday things that tend to get forgotten. The to-do list can get a bit unwieldy if it becomes too long (if? it's always way too long), and tends to make me sigh because I have still not gotten around to doing this or that, but that is not a problem of the programme, but of my too-ambitious planning.

There are plenty of small things to keep you motivated, too - special gear turning up from time to time, a chance of finding something such as a pet or pet food, and recently implemented are "boss quests" where you have to fight a special monster by doing all your daily tasks, for example. You can also join friends in a party, or join a guild of like-minded folks. For long-term positive reinforcement of getting things done, there's the real-life reward opportunity, which also works nicely for me (and is the main reason why my little avatar does not have that much equipment - I preferred having coffee or lunch with friends, or saving up to buy that yoga mat, or a book).

When I started using Habit, it was still very much in development, and quite... buggy. That has much improved now, though it's still being developed and gets add-ons periodically, such as the long-awaited checklist option. More gamification is possible now than in the first months, with a class system and more complex stats (that you can also ignore if you want).

Sometimes the documentation and explanation on what things do is a little... vague, and there are still plenty of bugs being had, but the developing team (which sports many, many volunteers) is doing a really good job of tackling them. So while there's the occasional glitch, overall I don't mind that much. I really like using Habit, and it actually has made a difference for me. If you like RPGs (or even if you are just curious about that thing), go and check it out. If you need help or want to read some more about it first, here's the wiki for Habit... but I'd actually recommend you to jump right in and give it a try with a few tasks and a few recurring tasks, and see if it suits you. It just might.

I have been skimming, reading and researching a heap of articles recently (processing them with the help of Qiqqa, as explained some time back).

Article databases and online journal repositories can be a wonderful way to lose a few hours, by a similar thing to the encyclopaedia effect - you sort of hop from one topic to a related one, and from one author to more of that author to another author... well. I think you all know how that ends. If you don't have access, though, it will most probably end in frustration - so many things, such high prices, so little chance to get at them.

One easy way to get article access is to get a library card from a friendly University library in your vicinity. But what if you do not live near one? For the Germans (or those living in Germany), there is good news: Everybody who has a permanent address in Germany can ask for participation in the Nationallizenzen scheme.

You register for this (stating, of course, your German address); then you get sent a letter with your login data. The Nationallizenzen access has a few restrictions, such as moving walls keeping you from the most recent publications and similar, but it's a very nice and convenient way to get at a huge number of articles and e-books that you otherwise would pay several arms and legs for.

So... hooray for access! And now I shall read some more articles. Because I can. (And because I need some more nice references and suggested further reading for, oh, still too many topics of that book project.)