I've gotten involved in a project, sort of, and that led to my finally stocking up on silk colours for the embroidery silks - emptying out the remainder of the undyed silk stock that I had left.

Somehow, this seems to be linked to fellow archaeologists prodding me - I actually started the project "embroidery silks" because a colleague, years ago, was asking me if I knew a source for naturally dyed silk, historically accurate, for embroidery. I looked around a bit and found out that this stuff was hard (read: impossible) to get. Then the usual thing happened - I looked around some more and found appropriate raw material (only slightly twisted mulberry silk), stuck my head together with my dyer, made her sigh and moan, and ended up with an assortment of embroidery silk colours.

Similarly, a few months ago, I got into contact with another colleague, who is working on a reproduction of an embroidery find, looking for appropriate threads to do the stitching... with a range of colours, most of which were not in my stock.



So soon, now, there will be some new colours in the shop for embroidery silk. I'm all excited that the colour range is finally a bit broader - with, among other things, a nice light, bright green, a darker blueish green and three shades of pinkish colours added in!

The new colours are already wound off, so one of the tasks for the next few days is to take photos of the current complete range and list the additional colours in the shop. The biggest challenge in this, by the way, is the photo-taking part, as a) colours and b) silks are notoriously hard to photograph...

Somehow the topic of work vs. hobby seems to be a hot one right now - or at least I found a few more things about them, which were interesting reads. One is an article about hobby vs. side hustle (as in part-time job) on Rewire, which goes into the same direction as the stuff I wrote a bit ago - that once you are making money from your hobby, it becomes a job.

"Do what you love, and you will never work a day in your life" is another thing sort of connected to this topic, and it's a saying that I find really unfitting - and untrue. I do love my work, but it's still work, and while having a passion for what you do can help in getting things done, and motivating yourself, it will not be the solution for every problem. There will also still be days when it is hard to buckle down and do the work - and that's how it is. There is no perfect job that always delivers joy only. "Find your passion", by the way, is also not as easy as some seem to think, and here's a nice piece about that.

Finally, the Atlantic has an article about how Workism - seeing work as a quasi-religion, and consequently working a lot - is making people suffer, and here's a second one about the perpetural hustle.

And with this all said, I think now I'll take a little coffee break...

...a-changing. Things, in my case.

I have mentioned that there has to be some iron gall ink making to be done - which also involves portioning that ink and packing it into suitable vessels.

Back when I ordered the first batch of ink, I looked for small bottles that would not look obviously modern. I finally found some that loosely resembled an ink bottle I found on a late medieval image (which, to my chagrin, I did not write down, so I don't know which one it was anymore). So I ordered those, stoppered them with a cork, put on a plastic shrink collar for extra security before selling, and that was it.

Now, however, these bottles are not available anymore. They have almost-twins, though - with the difference being that my previous ones were corkable only, and the current version has a screw-on top.



Which is, obviously, very much non-medieval. However, it is also a good bit safer against spillage than a cork. So after a good bit of thinking, and looking for an alternative bottle version that resembles medieval forms and is suitably small (which I did not find), I did order the modern twin of my old bottle.

I'd prefer selling the perfect ink bottle - but that is not possible unless I'd get a glassmaker to make the bottles to order, turning one of my lower-price items into something rather expensive. In addition, most images of scribes show the ink being held in horns for writing, and only some show bottles with more ink supply, those being considerably larger than the amounts needed by today's users. So these small bottles are a compromise from the very start.

Which means that in the future, if you buy ink from me, you will get a small bottle with a travel- and transport-safe, modern screw-on lid.



You will also, along with this, get a small cork stopper that you can use instead of the screw-on lid, if you want - because you like corks better, or because you will be using the ink in an environment where things should not be obviously modern.



And now I hope that this is a good enough compromise not only for me, but for my customers, too...

One of the topics that come up from time to time is turning a hobby into a job, or a part-time job - people selling the things they are making.

One of the things that I always mention when this happens is the importance of calculating correctly. This means that if you would be working full-time in this new job, you should be able to make enough money to live off it. So you should calculate the price of your items accordingly - and that will give you a benchmark for what to ask, and should also give you an idea of whether turning your pastime into a job could work. Especially if you are thinking of quitting your current day job, you might want to check if you will be able to keep the standard of living that you are accustomed to, or if (and how much) you are willing to save in order to change to your new venture. Which means it's probably a good idea to list how much money you are spending each month, and how much of that is fixed (which includes, for instance, rents and insurances) and how much is fluid. I had a conversation about this fairly recently, and it only took about three minutes of mentioning what all has to be paid by the income of what is made (such as health insurance, website costs, savings for old age, light and heating for the workspaces, and a gazillion other things) to get my conversation partner think really hard about whether this would be a good idea or not.

In case your numbers come out favourably, and you are planning to go full blast into your new venture, it's also a good thing to keep in mind that your company will take some time to start up and to get known well enough to actually make money. Usually, it takes about two to three years for this - which means you should have some savings to keep you afloat during those lean times. Or start part-time, build up from there, and see if you can (and want) to go full-time after you are better established.

It may well be that, after looking at all these figures and doing the maths and thinking about it, you will prefer to leave things as they are - your day job as your day job, providing work and bread, and you hobby as just your pastime, providing fun and satisfaction (hopefully in addition to the satisfaction you get from your day job). And that is an absolutely valid decision. In fact, it may be the smartest decision in a lot of these cases.

One last thing that is sometimes forgotten, or not mentioned: If you turn your hobby into your work, you will lose the hobby. The way you look at things related to the hobby will change, and your whole attitude to this will change. It may stay fun work, but it will be work, and there will be days when you don't enjoy it that much.

When I went ahead and turned Living History stuff into part of my job, it changed a lot for me. I knew that would happen, so I wasn't surprised by it. However, the extent of the change actually did surprise me; I had not expected that much, and that deep of a change on how I look at things. It's hard to pinpoint all the little and large aspects, and even harder to explain. It also does not mean that I don't enjoy dressing in medieval garments and cooking food over an open fire and chat with people who do the same - but I'm still at my workplace, and I still have my professional hat on in some way, so it does feel very different from what it was before. So be aware that while trying to make money by doing something you love will not necessarily reduce that love, but it will most probably change things around it very much indeed.

There's nothing wrong with having a hobby you enjoy and not making anything out of it except your own, personal enjoyment. That is what pastimes, hobbies, and holidays are for, after all: Personal enjoyment. Plus, while a part of your enjoyment may lie in getting better at what you are doing, part of what makes a hobby so enjoyable is that there is little pressure to achieve something within a certain time, or someone else expecting you to perform to a given standard. (Obviously, if your hobby is competing in some way, this may not be true - but it should still give you personal enjoyment, and that's the point.)

Finally, there's a very nice article about just that topic - letting a hobby stay a hobby - here. Enjoy - and let me know what you think!

I've run out of iron gall ink now, so it's time to get some more... or, to put it better, to make some more. Last time, I had a colleague make my batch, but as she's not working anymore, I have decided to do it myself this time. And obviously, the goal is to use an original medieval recipe...

...which poses a slight problem. Not because there are no recipes, no - quite the opposite. There are quite a lot, and though they are similar in regard to the ingredients, the details - and the amounts of the main ingredients that are given - can vary quite a lot. Some of them mention that one should be able to tell, from experience, how much exactly of one of the ingredients should go in.

Yeah. Only problem is that if you have no experience... well, you get the picture.

My search for recipes (which I have collected, and I will soon just pick one and go with it), though, has also brought me across an interesting database project: Colour Context, a database on colour practice and knowledge. It features transcribed recipes from a number of (mainly late-medieval) sources - so if you are interested in medieval colour, or artwork, this may be of interest for you.

One of the fun-not-fun things I get to do every year, at the start of the year, is do my car cost calculations for the tax stuff. The car we have (which stands in the garage most of the time) is owned not by us, or myself, but by my company, so its costs are part of my business costs.

I am, of course, allowed to use it for private things as well - but as it's the company's car, this counts, for all bureaucratic purposes, as something called "Leistungsentnahme - Nutzung von Gegenständen für Zwecke außerhalb des Unternehmens" (use of goods for purposes outside of business), and that, in turn, counts as part of the generated income... and that, in its own turn, is what I owe 19% VAT for.

If you are confused now, let me un-confuse you: I have a car (that I paid for), but if I use it for private purposes, I have to calculate the actual costs per kilometre, figure out how many km I have been driving for private stuff (which means keeping and then going through the vehicle log), calculate the value of that, and then pay the 19% of VAT of this value to the state. So I basically have to pay to use my own car... which is in some sense feeling so absurd that it makes me laugh a little inside every time.

The side effect of having a company car and having to do all this mathsy stuff on its costs? Getting a very, very clear picture of how much a klick of driving a car really costs. Now, mind you, our car gets relatively little use - I end up at significantly under 10,000 km per year, unless some really unusual, weirdly long journeys happen - and of course, figures can change. But if you've ever heard of the 0.3 € costs per km that are often used as a basis for calculating driving costs, and thought to yourself "well, that is way more than I pay", you were probably falling into the same trap that I did before changing to company car. Most people only look at the obvious running costs, which is the fuel (and maybe the oil), but really, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Yes, if you only reckon fuel costs, driving 500 km seems to cost very little in comparison to going with public transport, such as metro or train.

What gets forgotten, though, are all the other costs... and there are plenty of these. You have to buy the car. Insurance for the car is obligatory in Germany, plus there's car taxes. Maintenance costs - regular checks to keep things running - as well as repairs. Costs for the garage. New tires, necessary once in a while. Possibly membership in some club for accident and breakdown cover. Costs for TÜV (regular vehicle inspection).

Which means that many years, our car has not cost .3 € per kilometre driven, but something in the range of .34-.35 €. This means ten km cost three € fifty - that's a coffee in a café. Driving a hundred costs 35 €.

Of course, some of the costs per km will go down if you drive more. We have a diesel car, which becomes cheaper (because of high taxes, but low fuel costs, comparatively) if you drive more. (There are studies that come to the conclusion that electric cars are already the more cost-effective solution, though they do not state how many km per year they used as the basis for the calculations.) But then you will also have service intervals coming up faster, and there will be more wear and tear. So let's say I drive more and can calculate with .3 € - even with this number as the actual costs, public transport will often be cheaper. If I manage to get a super saver price, it's sometimes just a fraction of what the car would cost, less than half the price if I'm lucky.

Added bonus? If I'm sitting in the train, I can do whatever I want to. If I am sitting in the car, I have to drive. Maybe I can listen to some podcast on the side, but knitting or reading or writing are right out - which are all things I like to do during train rides. So if I can, I'll use the train for travel.

Obviously, there are things where this is not possible, such as fairs, when I fill the car with stuff - but I've successfully lugged stuff for a workshop or a work meeting in the huge suitcase I have just for these purposes all through Germany and, indeed, across borders. That suitcase fits about 16 clamps plus a lot of extra stuff. It's not fun to lug it up or down stairs when fully loaded, and not fun to run with it when the train is delayed and I have to hurry to catch the next one - but I still love being able to go to a work spot per train. I just try to see these things as free fitness training.

So - are you a train/public transport or car person? Have you ever figured out the true cost of your car kilometres?

Today is earmarked for finally, finally sitting down and getting the book-keeping up to date. Tax day is coming up, and I'm woefully behind with the keeping of the bureaucratic side of things, so it's paying bills today, marking bills with little numbers, matching the little numbers in my software, and then (with a very happy sigh) putting away a stack of paper at the end, sending off the tax report and after it, sending money to the Finanzamt (who kindly expects to hear something from me every quarter of the year, plus twice more for the main taxes and for the final version of my VAT balances).

To my great surprise, it actually feels good to sit and do this stuff - a job I usually don't like very much. I'm still not over the moon about it, because it always means some amount of searching for this receipt or that email, and checking stuff, and occasionally doing some research on the 'net on how and where to book something, and much of this feels like a waste of time. However, I've had so many other (and time-critical) things to do and prepare in the last weeks that this time around, sitting down for this calculated waste of time means that all these nice, exciting, but also exhausting things are over for now, and I can get back to breathing calmly and get into "normal mode" again... which also, hopefully, means I get to whittle down the to-do-list some, and get re-started on a bunch of projects which had to fall off the list for a while.

Other inhabitants of this lair here, of course, have never left normal mode:



Which, in this case, means a lot of napping, especially now that there is quite a bit of snow on the ground - which Madame does not appreciate a lot...