One of my lovely colleagues has a new book out - Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert has written a monograph about monastic (not only monastic, though) garments and Greek terminology. Here's her description of it: 

This book focuses on clothing customs and their evolution in the Egyptian monastic environment of late antiquity and the early Arab period. It falls within the realm of studies on ancient societies as seen through their languages, material culture, daily life and religious practices. The research presented here contributes to a general discussion on the clothing worn in Egypt and its role as a social marker. The designations and forms of monastic vestments are explored through a meticulous lexicographical study and an investigation of the garments that have been preserved or are represented in iconography, in order to place them in the context of ancient "fashion" and to shed light on the technological changes that affected their production.
The idea of a costume specific to the monastic rank seems to have appeared in Egyptian society in the middle of the 4th century. This "official" garb was reserved for special situations, such as participation in the liturgy, while "ordinary" garments were worn by the monk for everyday tasks and for sleeping. Considered separately, the elements that made up the "official" attire were commonly worn at this time (with the exception of the apron and scapular), and it was only when worn together that they distinguished a monk from a layman.

The book is titled Le vêtement monastique en Égypte (IVe-VIIIe siècle) and has been published by the Ifao, in the series Bibliothèque d'études coptes, no 28. 

 With the pandemic lasting for rather long, I started (like some other people) to offer some of my workshops or courses online. So far it's the sewing workshop (about medieval stitches, seams, and hem types) and the spinning workshop.

I've been asked at some points about offering other workshops as well, and I've thought about it, but not every one of my workshops is online-able, at least not in my reckoning and how I teach it.

The most recent in-person techniques that I taught were the tablet-weaving workshop and the loop-braiding one. I can definitely say that I will not offer the tablet weaving one as a digital version. There are several reasons for that.

One of them is that there's often little movements or little habits that influence how smoothly the weaving goes. I need to see these, and in my experience from the spinning workshop, that is just not possible via a small screen and with limited camera positioning possibilities. It's not as crucial in the spinning workshop as it is for tablet weaving, and there it can already cause issues. 

I also need to be able to see the band, in detail and from up close - because occasionally, threading errors happen, or a single tablet flips or goes out of alignment, and, well, see above.

Those are the visual issues. 

Warping is another thing where I have a set-up in the workshop that works well, but it requires using my favourite all-purpose-tool: the clamp. To be more accurate, four clamps per person. These are used for warping, then two serve as anchor points for the warp for the rest of the workshop, and then I pack them up and take them home again. That means that participants in an online version would have to warp with what they have at home, or get clamps on loan and have to send them back, or have to buy clamps, or I'd do the warping and send the finished warp for the workshop. The last would be the easiest version logistically, but it would also mean that warping - which is an important thing to learn - would not be part of the experience.

And then... there's the touching. Warp tension is one thing where it's helpful to touch and see, but that is the least of the points. There's this stage in the workshop when we're going off to weave freestyle patterns based on diagonals - diamonds, X-shapes, diamonds with a swirly centre, diagonals branching off each other. Mistakes happen, confusion might occur, and then I need to orient myself to see what happened, and what needs to be done, and I do that by leafing through the stack of tablets, checking each one.

And this is where, at the very latest, the idea of doing this virtually would die. I'm still hoping to some day, when it gets less busy here, finish filming and making the instruction video for tablet weaving planned and started oh, way too long ago - but transforming the in-person workshop on tablet weaving to an online version is just not possible. 

(In case you're wondering about the difference between a video course and the live online version: The video can be watched again and again if there's something unclear or difficult. Since different people tend to have their problems at different places, watching individually and re-playing the passages in question would not be an issue. Explaining something online live without the possibility of showing it on the band, and having potential visual problems caused by the participant cameras, well... let's say that this is sure not to work out well. It would also mean factoring in a good amount more time for the workshop in advance, making an already rather long one... impossibly long.)

It was, let me tell you, an absolutely and utterly glorious weekend that I had in Lübeck. OUr train there was actually on time, and we had the afternoon to spend in the city, looking at the curious little spaces filled with small houses in the former backyards of larger houses. We also had a look at the ships in the museum harbour, at the beautiful cathedral St. Mary, and at a tea exhibition and medieval artworks in St. Annen. 

Then there was delicious cake and coffee, to get us a little warmed up again after being outside for a while. The weather was half not-so-nice and cold, half sunny-but-windy-and-quite-cold, so both Friday and Saturday morning saw us pretty frozen after a while, and on Saturday noon my fingers felt really frozen, so much that a fresh cup of tea was not enough to fully warm them up again.

And then, on Saturday... festivities! First me and Kathrin Hüing from the Hansemuseum did our workshop/guided tours through the Guter Stoff exhibition, then there was a little "danse macabre" show performed by the Hansevolk zu Lübeck, and the evening was spent with celebration of the 30th birthday of the FGHO. That meant meeting and chatting with lovely people, with delicious finger food and drinks. It was the first party of that kind for me in a long, long while, and it was absolutely wonderful.

I also had time in the museum this visit to play around with some of the interactive bits in the special exhibition. My favourite one? Emboss your own "cloth seal". It's not a real cloth seal, of course - but you can, as a souvenir, emboss a silvery carton roundel with one of three different designs. One of them is the sheep "Locke", who also leads children through the special exhibition. It's probably not hard to guess which one is my favourite of the three...

... and the embossed Locke is the perfect thing to personalise my laptop.

Much, much nicer than the manufacturer's seal on the laptop cover! This delights me no end. 

Also delightful: There is a cloth measuring tape, especially made for "Guter Stoff", with medieval fabric design on one side and the measuring tape on the other side. And yes, I am now the proud owner of one of them. You can get them in the museum shop in the main house of the EHM in Lübeck. And the really good news is that you have until October to do so - the exhibition has been extended! 

It's one thing done, the next thing in prep - I've just finished sorting and putting away all the tools and extra bits and bobs that went with me to the tablet weaving workshop. Apart from those bits and bobs of the collection that are going to travel to Lübeck with me!

The loops for the braiding workshop are all cut, knotted, and bundled together for the different braids; there's material to anchor them, there's extra yarn and my trusty measuring and loop-making tool, there's scissors and loops and all that remains is to print out the things that have to be printed out, and to pick and pack some of the sample bands so people can get an idea of what is possible with loop braiding. Like in all my workshops, I try to teach "understanding the structure" as opposed to "follow this set of instructions blindly to get result A, and this set of instructions to get result B". So we start with five loops, and every loop in a different colour - this makes later analysis easier, as you can follow each of the colours through the band. Or bands, depending if you are braiding one or two at the same time.

The biggest part of the equipment are the clamps I use to anchor the braids - but fortunately, the trusty suitcase has no problem to fit them, and it rolls so well that it's also no trouble to push or pull it around. Only staircases are not my most favourite thing in the world when I'm travelling with workshop equipment... makes you keenly aware of what people with reduced mobility have to face every day. 

I'm already looking forward to Lübeck on Saturday and Sunday!

The Hansemuseum Lübeck is up to great things - the first one in line: A conference about "Interwoven Societies", starting tomorrow.

For those of you interested in the conference, but unable to get to Lübeck for it, there's fantastic news: It will be streamed live on the EuroWeb YouTube channel! The conference programme is available here, it looks very interesting, and I'm looking forward to tuning in there tomorrow.

And then there's even more! 

The FGHO is celebrating their 30 year anniversary, and for that there's guided tours on Saturday - one of them including me. You can book your spot here on the museum website.

Finally, on Sunday I'll be giving a loopbraiding workshop. There's also still a few spaces left - you can join in!

I'm back from the weekend weaving workshop - which was (as these things tend to be) an enormous amount of fun, both for me and (according to their comments) the participants.

There was a lot of weaving done - quickly making centimeters on the bands on the first day. My weaving workshops always start with the very basics: Getting the hang of what different threading directions do, weaving stripes, the absolute basic principles on how patterns work. Then we do a little bit of doubleface to warm up, and then the fun starts.

That also means that the second is was devoted to more thinking and more looking at tablets, and more sorting things around, which slows down the weaving process. Let's say that it can be surprisingly hard to weave a simple monochrome surface... but all of my weavers did very, very well, and went away with a band and a learning curve that they can really be very proud of.

And I actually remembered to take a few photos! Though most of them are on a different camera than this very, very blurry one that I snapped with my phone, and have not transferred yet:

I did not promise twill in the workshop description, on purpose, but I usually get signals very quickly if the group, more or less, would like to try it. (They usually do.) And if that's the case, I try to get things arranged so everyone who wants to can get a little bit of the twill experience. 

That was also the case on the weekend, and we did manage to progress into twill weaving for the last part, to my great pleasure and to the great spinning of heads (in German you say "rauchende Köpfe", as in the brain is working so hard that smoke curls up from the head) on the weavers' side. 

I love weaving twill on tablets, and I really love teaching it. Twill is hard, though. You have to keep track of a lot of things simultaneously, and there's a stack of tablets that needs to be handled delicately and correctly, so some of your capacity is already taken up by the fine motor skills demands, and then (if you've done tablet weaving beforehand) there are things you always did differently and you have to do my way now (because of reasons, not because I like to pester people) so that eats even more of your brain or (if you haven't done tablet weaving beforehand) there are so many new movements that it's also eating up brain capacity, and that together means that it is getting hard to count to two.

There is concentrated deep silence during most of the time when I'm running a tablet weaving workshop. I have actually tried it once, where there was no carpet on the floor, and yes, you could hear the pin drop. That concentrated silence is even more obvious if twill is requested by the participants, though then you sometimes hear sighs, quiet mumblings (to keep track of the sequence in which things should be done) or, if something has gone properly wrong, a little cry for help or assistance.

As is also usual, only a part of the group went on to venture a little deeper into twill after the first bit of it. Twill weaving is not for everyone - you have to like this kind of brain-bending mental gymnastics, and some people do, and some people don't, and that is absolutely okay. The system I use is all logical throughout, and there's a stack of rules and little hacks and standard procedures that really help, but the challenge in the workshop is that you have to remember all of them at the same time, and a weekend workshop always means that there is limited time to let each new standard really settle into the brain and the hands.

I'd really like to try and teach tablet weaving for a full week some time, and see what could be done with a bit more practise before progressing to the next steps... but that would probably have to be at some weaving school or special event. Who knows, though - there's been so many interesting things and projects and jobs in the past that I'd never have dreamt of, the opportunity might arise at some place and some time.

For now, I have some notes to review, and some bits of my workshop script to tweak, a few little changes to make for the next workshop, and then I'll be waiting for the next opportunity to make some brain cells work very, very hard... 

Just before the presentation in Syke, there was an interview for the NDR (that is the Northern German Radio/TV), which is also online now. You can find it here - again all in German, of course. 

If you happen to be in London in the next months, you might consider going to see an exhibition about Kumihimo in the Japan House London. It will run until June, so there's still some time left. For those who want to get in the mood, or cannot make it but would still like to hear more about kumihimo, there is a recorded talk about the exhibition on the website as well. 

And just in case you'd prefer going for a nap, but have a hard time falling asleep: There's a Boring Books for Bed podcast. Though I'm not absolutely sure I agree with the title "boring" for something about embroidery. You can also listen to things about Egyptian Archaeology. Or Darwin's Origin of Species...