I'm back from two weeks full of exciting things to do and new things to learn and wonderful people to meet, and accordingly I spent most of yesterday asleep, catching up on the hours lost to discussions and work.

We had a small, but very intense and very successful Textile Forum in Mayen, with a dyeing experiment that surprised us all with the outcome. After the Forum, I got to spend some more time with friends that had come to the Forum from Netherlands, Germany, England and Sweden, visiting Maria Laach in lovely weather.

After this, I went to see the new abode of my friends from the Wollschmiede and helped them a little bit with their renovation. It's a lovely old house that now has a new roof and will soon be their home and workplace, with much better opportunities for both dyer and blacksmith than the old apartment could offer.

And to top off all of this, I then was part of the programme for the opening of LEA in Mayen this last weekend, demonstrating wool preparation and spinning techniques to a very interested public. We had immense luck with the weather - it rained on Friday evening and night, and it was a little cool on Saturday morning, but then the sun came out and we had a wonderful time both Saturday and Sunday.

And now I'm looking forward to a few days here to reorganise myself and catch my breath before going to the traditional season's end market - Tannenberg. This year, however, I'll have to go without the most patient of all husbands, who ruptured his Achilles tendon last Saturday and now moves around on crutches... and those are not very compatible to the uneven and possibly muddy Tannenberg grounds.

In case you are interested in trying medieval embroidery, I will be giving a course in Erlangen on the 27th of October and the 28th of October 2012. The first day will be dedicated to counted-work techniques (canevas), while the second day covers the techniques with free pattern design. The two days are bookable separately in case only one of the two variations is of interest for you, and the course fee includes materials (a piece of linen fabric suitable for the work and the silk (and partly gold) threads). Course language will be German (of course).

You can book both workshops, counted work and pattern embroidery via my new online shop. Workshop places are limited, of course, so that the group does not get too large.

Embroidery workshops are great fun, and I'm already looking forward to this!

... again. After several months with very little to no rain, it seems as if nature is trying to catch up, and it has been pouring down now and again - with lots of heat and sometimes really humid air inbetween.

I don't really mind the sound of rain, though, and I'm happy that we do not have to water the lawn or the flowers and tomatoes outside. The cat, however, is not so pleased. She would much prefer staying dry when attending to necessities outside, and it took her a few minutes of sitting and looking into the rain before she decided she prefers to get a little wet from the outside instead of using the (perfectly dry and of course clean) litter tray inside. Cats. At least the birds don't mind the rain too much, so she can still have cat entertainment from the dry inside.

I have actually managed to do some proper writing yesterday for one of the articles I have to do, and I plan on doing some more today, so things are moving on. I feel a definite need for some holidays though - good thing that a summer break is not really far away now!

First of all, one of those links I mentioned a good while ago: the Cambridge Digital Library. There's actually two sites, and older and a new one, listing some books that are digitised either partly or (in case of the newer site) cover-to-cover. The link goes to the old one (which has a link to the new one right on top).

Unfortunately, my standard tests of searchability (using the terms "spinning wheel", "spinning" and "spindle", sometimes also "wool" and "distaff") did not yield any results, and it does not seem as if there are keywords matched to the pages or illuminations. Still, it's old books with pics, online for free.

More old books, online for free (provided they are already public domain) can be found in the HathiTrust Library. There is the possibility to create a login and put together a collection of items, or browse others' collections. That includes 18th century cookbooks, for those of you who favour an old-fashioned roast.

And speaking of books... have you ever wondered why some folks offer out-of-print (or even still in print) books on amazon for really, really ridiculously high prices? It seems that pricing algorithms are to blame. Those companies don't even set the prices themselves, they are having a programme do that, which can lead to interesting results - as described here.

That was not so miscellaneous, right? I can change that.

Here. Gratuitous cat pic.

I have found in the last two days not one, but two long-ish lists of online resources in the Internet. They may or may not hold links to pages that are utterly nice and helpful - I don't know yet, but I intend to find out and then post the links.

And while I am at that, and doing my bookkeeping (again! yes!), and a small-to-medium-sized bunch of other stuff that is writing-related, have a gratuitous cat picture.


That's Madonna, our cat, doing one of the things she (like all cats) does best: napping.

Since I've been working with tools now, it's very fitting that Gillian shared this lovely bit of knowledge with me: the publication of the Maestermyr tool chest is available online. It's the full publication from the 1980s, in English, so it includes the full catalogue.

The site it's hosted on is some kind of e-library, though I could not figure out whether it's a private or an institutional one.

If you would prefer today to test your knowledge on experimental archaeology, you can go here and try to solve a crossword puzzle about the topic. I did not manage to do it without some cheating, but my excuse is that I'm not in the UK or US and thus do not know the masters there... and I'm a textile person, anyways. Best excuse ever.

Speaking of textile person: the cross-and-post tabletweaving thingie is finished. It could do with some more neatening at a few places, but it's done, it's functional, and it comes fully apart. Yay. Plus I now know how to do mortises. This was the mortise-practice-piece for the spinning wheel parts that need mortises, after all.

Here's the thingie - the weave is just clamped to the posts for now, but I will wind it on properly for working with it.






The wheel is also coming along, slowly but steadily - on today's agenda is to saw and construct the jig for the wheel rim and the jig for drilling the leg holes for the stand.

I spent a few hours in the workshop yesterday, having a lot of fun. It's been ages since I last used powered tools extensively, and I still never used them as much as this time around. I can absolutely appreciate the beauty and the special feeling that comes with doing everything the slow way and by hand, but I'd never build a wheel in that way.

And now I'll finish my tea and bumble off to the workshop again, for a little intermezzo: the tablet-weaving "loom" is on today's agenda. And maybe I'll even remember to take some pictures...