I'm still editing my video stuff - as usual, there's way more to say (and thus way more material) that I can actually fit into the time span that I have. Not that I'm surprised... at all.

The thing I'm making this video for? I'm one of the experts in Danièle Cybulskie's Medieval Masterclass, which will start this Friday. It's a six-week course intended for creators who wish to use the Middle Ages in their work, and are looking for input that is hard or impossible to get from the usual sources. So I've been dragging stuff into the living-room-gone-video-studio and waving them around, and talking about them.

Tomorrow will hopefully see me finishing the cutting and editing work. There will be lots and lots of cutting... but as my German teacher back in school used to tell us, when teaching us how to abridge an old German play (which would have been performed in about 3 hours, originally, and had to be shortened enough to take place in a bit more than one): "You can always cut down by a third.".

The funny thing about that? I had already cut a third or more from the text, which was clearly visible from all the red ink on the sheet. I told him so. His reply? "You can always cut down by a third." As in... just do it again.

I did. It worked. To this day, that's what I tell myself when I need to shorten things... and I still grin, remembering that day.

 

I stumbled across this video today - and thought you might enjoy it, too:

(My day was also spent with video stuff... I have filmed the last bits, and now am cutting. There is to be SO MUCH cutting... as usual, I would like to say so much more than time allows!)

It feels weird to be working on Fridays again - though I am certainly not running out of things to do! Especially not with the current video project going on... which I'll now return to, for the last few sections. Though with the weather currently outside, it is hard to be inside and working, we have cool but very bright and sunny weather here.

Which is good - as I still have a very last fleece in the wool washing basin outside, and the warmer it is, the quicker the washing goes. That means it's not very quick currently, nor is the drying. Every little bit of sunshine helps here, as well as taking the drying wool inside soon enough in the late afternoon, before the evening dew is falling. I forgot to do that yesterday, so the result is a fleece that is at least as wet as when I put it out... maybe even a tad wetter.

I'm not completely sad about that bit of forgetfulness, though, as this morning it looked utterly beautiful:

Well, here I am. Still doing video stuff... which means that one of the work desk chairs (or, more precisely, a stool) is sitting in the living-room-turned-video-studio. Which means that my old desk chair is back at my desk, and the Most Patient Husband is using his regular chair... and Madam the Cat thus lacks a chair.

Which has been commented upon loudly and verbosely. Cat-verbosely. At least her cat bed is free of stuff (sometimes she doesn't use it for a good while, and I start piling things up on top of it, and then I take them off again and put them away when she expresses interest in sleeping there) so she's using it now. When she's not hanging out over my arm on my desk, that is, during the time that I take care of computer work. Such as blogging.

So currently, I have a very warm right arm; the rest of me is not so warm because I sort of forgot to put on a sweater after the last filming stint, which I started in a t-shirt when it was a good bit warmer a few days ago, and now I'm stuck with that shirt. (Yes, I could change it, but I sort of prefer to look the same, as much as possible, throughout.) And stuck with the level of warmth it provides... it's not too bad, though.

Next step is editing the bits already taken care of, and seeing where that puts me time-wise, and then doing some more video-ing. At least now I have a routine that promises to make some cutting aspects easier - such as holding the clapper into each camera as it starts recording, which should mean I have a written title and take reference for each clip and can line them up more easily. I also have figured out how to align camera 1 (used for the "long shot" and camera 2 (used for the showing-small-things shot) and mount them on their tripods so that hopefully one run through will show all the bits that I need to show. Bonus feature: It's just a lot of fun to use a clapper!

I'll know more soon... after cutting.

It's November now, and Germany is in what the politicians call "Lockdown Light" - which basically means that events are cancelled, leisure centres are closed, and people are requested to cut down on their social contacts as much as possible. Meetings in private or public are limited to a maximum of five people from two households, but schools stay open and it's still possible to go to work (unless you work at a leisure activity centre like a gym, or at a museum, which is closed.)

For us personally, there won't be much of a change from the last weeks. We've already had severely limited in-person contacts and are both working from home. We'll miss bouldering at our gym, but had reduced our visits the last four weeks already because it was rather too full for our peace of mind in some of the time slots that we could make. For now, I have a video project that will keep me well occupied the next week or so, especially since the start was a bit, um, not going as smoothly as I would have hoped. But I think I have stuff better set up and adjusted now - and hope the whole thing will turn out well!

There's a "Mittelaltermarkt Online" again on Saturday, and I'll be there!

There have been a few of these markets this year, but I was away or otherwise engaged for the last few events. This time, the stars have lined up favourably, and I'll take part again.

The market organisers have shifted the timeframe of the market, it now starts at 17:00 German time, so the Saturday (which we usually spend, at least partly, with grocery shopping, like so many others) doesn't get ripped apart by a noon-to-afternoon event. I totally approve, and am very happy with that change.

In case you missed the last ones, and don't know at all what I am talking about: The market is intended to give people a possibility to do some "medieval shopping" that they would otherwise have done on real-life markets and events. There's a stage with some entertainment, and stalls with different goods offered by different people. They are not all medieval as in historically correct, but if you don't expect that, it's quite enjoyable and fun.

Registration is necessary (but free), and then you can click yourself along the market paths (which remind me of a simple game dungeon), look at the stalls left and right, and chat with the stall owners, look at their goods, and maybe buy something. It's even possible to run a video meeting so one can video-chat with people. That is the closest online equivalent to a real market that I have yet seen, and actually allows to explain things or show something.

So: Stop by if you wish, and have a chat with me!

My current side project: Sorting wool.

I've enough of a stash of Valais Blacknose wool now that it should be possible to have it spun into yarn; my plan is to get both yarn (single) in around 1 mm diameter, and a bit of the same stuff as two-ply yarn suitable for nalbinding (or knitting). The single would then be suitable for weaving a medium-quality, common type of wool fabric with about 10 threads per cm, something very hard to get these days.

Before sending it in, though, the wool has to be sorted - there are some bits of the fleeces not suitable for going into the yarn. Either because there's too much small vegetable matter in the part, or the wool bits are not a good enough quality (the areas around the sheep's bum may have yellowed or browned and brittle fibres, and those are tossed out), or there are second cuts (which are very short fibres, and thus something not wanted at all in a good yarn). So there I sit now, sorting the wool - and I'm quite curious to see how much I will end up with once I'm through the stack.

Some of it will, of course, stay unspun (so that the shop will stay stocked), and the carded wool will also still be available. But, if everything goes according to plan, I will have yarns too! The yarn price will then depend on how much ends up spun, how much of that is plied, whether the wool will have to be washed before processing (I'm sending in the washed fleeces, as I don't store them in the dirt, but as my washing is very gentle, there remains some lanolin. Depending on the machines and the exact processes, that may have to be removed). So things remain exciting, and interesting...

And of course, the cat helps with her own unique brand of quality control:

[caption id="attachment_5578" align="alignnone" width="902"] Spot the cat!