I am returned home from a wonderful and lovely time outdoors with friends - time spent paddling in warm, clear waters, swimming, reading, having lovely food (both homecampsite-made and dining out), knitting some socks, looking at the lush greenery, making oodles of bad puns and generally relaxing a lot. It was not only wonderful, but also a much-needed recharge of my batteries.

I spent the first day back going through 300+ emails, and one of those is the reason you get a blogpost today already instead of tomorrow. If you have read German academic books, chances are that you have held one published by de Gruyter in your hands. It's one of those typical academic publishing houses that have a very good reputation, but can be extremely pricey.

De Gruyter has bought up two other academic publishers, namely Akademie Verlag and Oldenbourg Verlag. To celebrate this, they are granting free access to the ebook versions of all the current titles of both publishing houses. The books are in German, but if you read German and need a book from their programmes, this is your opportunity.

Free access is possible until August 31; you find the titles of Akademie Verlag here and those of Oldenbourg here. And if you visit the site, have a laugh at some of the ebook prices they offer - the printed and bound version costs 19.80 €, while the ebook is priced at 198.00 €! (I wonder why... don't they want to sell ebooks too?)

As of yesterday evening, I am the (middling) proud owner of a (mediocre, but functioning) model of a warp-weighted loom.
Well, to be honest, it's not completely finished yet - I need to fiddle with the position of the heddle rod brackets a bit more before fixing them.


It was made out of scrap wood that was hanging out in our basement plus two Y-shaped pieces of hazel wood, straight in from the garden. It's even set up already, and I have woven the first few wefts.



As you can see, the starting border is totally out of dimension in comparison to the huge loom size (about 30 cm width), as is the rest of the weave. That is the problem with models regarding textile - it's very hard or impossible to scale down the actual textiles, and that changes the overall look of both production models and garment models. In case you ever wondered why a small doll dressed up to model a set of garments looked ever so subtly wrong, that is probably the reason: if you don't scale down the fabric itself, the drapes and folds will be too large and too stiff.

In my case, however, that is irrelevant - I only want the small model to take along for workshops and seminars, to be able to explain the basics behind weaving and warp-weighted weaving. So scale, in this case, is not the issue.

(The starting border and weave is that narrow for a reason, by the way - not only because I wanted to save time in setting up the loom. It's the start of a form-woven tunic. I do not expect the piece to ever see the day of actually getting the body of the tunic added in... but it could happen. Theoretically. One day.)

You wouldn't have thought it was summer on the Saturday - all the day was very grey, dull, and rainy. Sunday, fortunately, was much better and made the weekend a very nice one over all.

It's still obvious, though, that every plant this year (at least every outdoor plant) is about one month later than normal. We still do not have any tomatoes worth mentioning - the small fruits already hanging on the plants are still very green and far from being ripe. But I do hope that we'll be able to eat some before the end of this month!

The hairnet is coming along nicely as well, but will need a few hours' more work before it is finished. Even if work goes very smoothly and each single knot only takes a few seconds to make - such a net has a lot of knots, and thus eats up work time and thread like crazy. And today, there is a bunch of other stuff on my list of things to do, so I will probably not get around to much netting. (Among the things on the list are small repair jobs for the market and fair equipment - a missing peg, a torn-off band, and some stuff to check and put away into its correct place.)

For years now, one of the almost forgotten techniques that are dear to my heart is (filet) netting. If you've seen one of those dainty, almost-nonexistent hairnets in the medieval part of a museum exhibition? Those are made by netting.

Contrary to what some people think (and some write), this is not the knot and the technique used for making fishnets. It's a different tool, a different method, and a different result - fine, small-meshed nets that can be used as hairnets as is or embellished with embroidery.

To keep the technique from dying out, I've tried to do my part - I sell the filet needles (replicas after a find from 14th century London), I demonstrate netting, and I teach the technique. Since many visitors do not know what that peculiar double-eyed needle is for, I usually place a finished hairnet close to the netting needle in my stall.

And occasionally, I will get The Question. The Question is a variation of "Do you make these for sale?" or "How much is such a net?" and is hard to answer - because most of my demonstration hairnets are ones that I used to try out a new technique, or material, or embellishment (like the ones with the pearls). Some of the work time was also clocked during demonstrations or at events, and you never work full speed on events, due to all kinds of distractions. That means that even though I recorded the time needed, it's not the realistic time for making one simple full net with suitable material, in the surroundings of the home workshop.

Netting needle eyes.

This has happened more often lately, so I have set out to do exactly that: Make a reference net of sturdy, white silk thread, in 4 mm mesh, aiming for the finished measurements of the late 13th century hairnet from London. I have started out yesterday, and I've about finished the crown part - next will be the interesting bit of doubling the number of mesh. (This, together with the start, is one of the fiddly bits in making a hairnet in the round.)

The clock is running. A hairnet, let me tell you, is not a thing made in an hour or so... it takes its sweet chunk of time. I'm not sure on whether it will be saleable, as it is - I have been pondering some alternatives to making it completely by hand, in order to offer a more affordable variation, but that will need some more planning.

If you have considered getting a hairnet, or have made one yourself, I would be happy to hear your input - such as how much you would be willing to pay for a (completely handmade) net, or how long it took you to make yours. Cheers!

I will admit it: I'm one of those who only look into books for the piccies. Well, old books, that is. While I can read Middle High German well enough to get most texts once they are transcribed and can read some very little Middle English (and thank you, Chaucer, for your tweets!), I have yet to read a manuscript in its original state.

Every time I run across a digitised manuscript library on the internet, I do a little happy dance (yay! More accessible manuscripts, and more manuscripts that will be there for posterity even if something dire happens - remember the archives at Cologne?) and then... I do a search.

I look for the search terms "spindle" and "wool" typically, both in English (if there is an English archive version) and in the archive's native language. Sometimes I'm lucky, other times I'm not.

I was not lucky in the St. Laurentius Digital Manuscript Library from Lund - but if you are looking for pics of nice medieval manuscripts, with pretty initials, you will really like this page. There's 64 digitised manuscripts from the 9th/10th century to the 16th century, and they are worth a look if only for the initials. (At least that's what I think.)

While I'm at links to libraries online: Umeå University has rare old books digitised as well, accessible via their "special collections" page. It was very slow for me, but if you are looking for an old print - you might get lucky there.

Oh, by the way: There is a lot of work still to be done on the Cologne archive material - the city has an info page about the damages and the work being done here (German only, but there's pics).

First of all, food: There's a new transcribed recipe on Medieval Cookery, so if you've always wondered how you should cook your Bruet of Almayne - here are several options.

Good food is one of the ingredients for a nice evening of games with friends - if you are looking for a nice medieval-style game board for backgammon and nine men's morris, take a look at Niklas' latest blogpost (in German, but there are pics).

If you're rather looking for a more intellectual pastime, maybe you would prefer to learn the language of the Vikings? There's a new book out there to teach you Old Norse and Runes, with a second volume for deepening your knowledge and reading skills forthcoming soon. (You can also look at samples from the book here.)

Speaking of books and Vikings, Marianne Vedeler has a new book coming out titled "Silk for the Vikings". It's available for pre-order at Oxbow books.

And if this has totally stressed you out now, and you need to relax, the Daleks will help you:

Today it's getting back on track - there are quite a few things lined up for me to do from before Herzberg, even though I still feel like I could sleep all day and then some. With no proper clue as to why - yes, it was a little less sleep than I'm used to during the last week, but not that much, and I should have caught up by now...

Anyway, there's catching up to do for me. Plus some new things  - several people, by now, have asked me how much a medieval hairnet made in filet technique would be. It has been a while since I've made the last one, so I could not give a really good answer... looks like it's time for me to net again and do the maths for a net price (haha).

First thing today, though, is slug through my emails and then set down to do some reading... I have been sent things to proofread. And they have a deadline...