In case you're looking for (research-y) summer reading stuff, you might want to check out JSTOR, who have expanded their free reading scheme from six to one hundred articles per month, to support researchers during the COVID-19 crisis. This is very nice, and very generous!

You need to register with them for access (which is free), and then you can read up to 100 paywalled articles; there is also a number of open-access articles on their page.

Happy reading!

It's almost weekend, and it promises to be another sunny one. Which is nice, but I'm actually waiting and hoping for some rain these days. We have had warm and dry weather for so long now that our rainwater barrels are almost empty - and I need the water both for watering the plants in the wintergarden (lovingly called "the jungle") and for washing the rest of my dirty wool from this year's shearing. As it currently stands, we're down to using the garden hose for watering the plants in the garden that absolutely need it (the not-lawn is not getting watered, but there's tomatoes and fruit trees that do need, and get, some care) and using tap or hose water for the wintergarden residents.

Washing wool takes a lot of water even if you try to use it as sparingly as possible... which means I have enough for about one more batch at the moment, maybe even two depending on how dirty the fleeces are, and then that's it. I'm not using tap water for wool washing, due to two reasons - it would need lots of tap water, which I think is too precious to spend on processing wool, when rain water will do just as well; and secondly, but just as importantly, I'm getting better results with rain water, as our tap water here is very hard.

So here I am, enjoying the sun yet hoping for rain. Preferably a nice, good, substantial and slow-starting rainfall during the night!

The two woad balls are drying slowly, and their outside is turning darker - blackish blue, or so I think.



Woad leaves, I also learned, have a rather characteristic smell... which is quite green, and quite interesting.

Another thing that is currently drying: The first batch of spindle whorls. It's time to make some more hand-formed ones, so I'll be doing that spread out over the next few days.



Which also means that if you have documentation about a (hand-formed) spindle whorl that you'd like to see in my shop, tell me about it! I'll then attempt to make a few approximations, and if they survive firing (which, sadly, can never be guaranteed) you can buy them...

The shop is back online, after a short break overnight to implement the change in VAT rate that is in effect here in Germany starting today.

I think the change was one of these ideas that are well-meant and sound really good at first, but are not as brilliant on a second, closer look. For me, it was rather easy to implement, with a smallish shop and a decision on how to handle it that makes things much easier for me. Changing the tax rate was, in my case, quick and easy to do. The prices, though, will remain the same, as the shop fixes the brutto price (including the tax). As I have both things with reduced tax rate in the shop as well as normal rate things, and the printed matter is partly bound to the price (there's a German book price law, which means a new book will cost the same no matter where you buy it, and the price is fixed by the publishing house), I can't just slap a general discount on.

My solution is to offer a discount code - you can enter this in the appropriate field shown on the shopping basket page - and you'll get the price reduction on all the eligible items. (Or you can just pay the full price, if you want me to have a bit more revenue from your purchases, which will also be welcome.)

Other vendors have not had it this easy, though. Especially if you have an automatic cashier desk or similar things, I've heard that things could be very complicated, and nerve-wracking. In quite a few branches of trade, there's a lot of confusion on how to handle this, and whether it's better to pass on the reduction to the customer, or to keep the little extra revenue. It should be clear in gastronomics (which was, I think, the primary reason for the VAT rate reduction), but in other businesses, I wonder if the extra amount of work and hassle will really be worth it. It's extra-complicated in the book trade, due to the fixed-price law!

Just like in so many other circumstances, only time will tell whether this stunt will actually do something for German economy. In the meantime, you can enjoy the discount and with it the accompanying "krumme Preise", as we say in German - non-round, slightly weird numbers for the prices.

And that's it for the current behind-the-scenes report...

It's time again for me to sit down and do some book-keeping stuff, and it's the time of year to take care of the tax homework. Sigh.

So I'll be going over my accounting stuff once more, and then do all the filling out and checking and calculating and double-checking once more, so that everything can be filed and paid and will be done and dealt with. And then there's this tiny little thing coming up at the end of the month... the temporary change in German VAT rates.

If you're not living in Germany, you will probably not have heard of that (or did you? Did it make the news in your country?). As part of the "let's get our economy back on track" package, the government has decided to lower VAT rates for 6 months.

The idea behind this isn't bad. For instance, for the gastronomy (which has had a lot of losses during the enforced closure time), with a lower tax rate, some more money will stay in their account if they keep the prices the same. For other companies that can afford it, they can pass the lower tax rate on to their customers, fully or partly, by reducing their prices a bit - so customers have more money and can spend more on stuff they need or want.

So far, so good. There's a few hitches in that plan, though, that makes it not completely brilliant for everyone. First of all, lowering the VAT rate from 19% to 16%, or from 7 to 5%, means that actual savings are at most about 2-3% of the regular price, so it's no huge reduction. It will definitely help struggling businesses to get a bit more revenue, if they leave the prices as is. That will however defy the second aspect of the government's plan, which is to have everybody spend more because things are cheaper.

There is, also, that teeny-tiny issue of having to change VAT rates and, if you wish to pass things on to the customer, prices. All of them. Which is, if you have to do it by hand, or have to print new menus and new stickers and new labels and new everything, quite an issue. If you are a large enough business to run your things with electronic cashier desks, those have to get software updates (which usually have to be done by specialist people, whom you have to get into your shop...). So in some cases, doing the change and undoing it again in 6 months' time will be a hassle, a huge effort, and something that costs quite a bit of time and money (and probably nerves).

I've looked into my shop system, and there is definitely no possibility for me to change all the prices to the VAT-adjusted lower amount without a lot of extra time to spend (which I'd rather spend on other things). I'll have to look into it some more during the next few days... and find a good solution that will hopefully satisfy everybody.

There's new shiny things here! Well, actually they are not shiny at all...

Almost exactly four weeks ago, I ate a passionfruit and then placed the seeds into a little dish with soil. I did manage to keep it moist for the four weeks, and guess what has now started to germinate?



Right! Now I'm very curious to see if they will grow, and survive, and maybe even flower at some point.

Another thing that is now finally sprouting, after weeks of hanging out in the soil, is this avocado seed:



And finally, also new, also not shiny, but still delighting me a lot - new spindle whorls have arrived, and I've taken some photos already, to update those in the online shop.



There's now a wider range of weights available, from around 9 g (and very few even lighter ones) to up to 50 g. New stone whorls are also here, and taking pictures of them is on my list for tomorrow...

 

The eye, the nose, the neck. Ah well.



First, let me tell you about the main difference, for me, in weaving ass-first versus nose-first: When starting with the nose, I will very easily end up with a baboon ass on the dog because of getting the timing of leg slope start and back slope start not quite right. When starting with the tail, I have a high probability of ending up with a too-thick neck because of somehow fuddling things up in the middle, and then getting the timing for the neck not quite right. I suspect that if woven cleanly, the thick-neck-problem might evaporate. (It's on my list to manage that the next time.)

The nose area, however, is a different beast.

[caption id="attachment_5364" align="alignnone" width="328"] Photo from UNIMUS.no


[caption id="attachment_5365" align="alignnone" width="441"] Photo from UNIMUS.no




If you compare the look of the back of the band in the tail and leg region, you can see that there is a characteristic look of broken narrow lines - that's the back of the regular diagonals structure, which is exactly what we have on the front for a while: white, purple, white, purple.



The noses on my dogs are all one of these regular stripes as well - white, purple, white; a single (two-thread) line on top of the band, and the regular broken line on the back. Except in the very first dog, where I did a wide nose.



Now, the rules of normal twill dictate that a line you "draw" on the background is either one line (two thread's worth) wide, or three lines (in order to go out with a nice clean line again). Three lines because you have, in the diagonal base setup, a white line coming out of the twill, then your pattern dark line, a light line, a dark line, and then a white line going back into twill again. For a wider line, you cover up the light between the two dark lines by change of tablet turn direction, but you still have to weave into the regular dark line to get a clean shape. So. Two or six is the choice you have.

The original animal's nose is wider than a single line (of two threads) and much more narrow than a regular wide line, though, and that is technically not possible without doing Strange Things (TM).

I suspect the sneaky and ingenious use of some double-turns here, to get the effect. I'm not sure yet how and where they need to get started, though. This is one of the cases where I'll actually sit down with pen and paper and start drafting this to see where lines meet normally, and where lines have to start, or change, to get the desired effect.

And then I can see another dog-weaving stint in my future...

(By the way, in case it interests you: If I don't make silly mistakes and have to weave back, weaving a doggie takes me about one and a half hours. Do try this at home, but not late in the evening when tired, especially not late in the evening when tired plus distracted by other stuff going on in the room that you feel the need to participate in while making silly mistakes in your weaving.)