Sometimes, I get info for something that sounds like an absolute blast and really useful at the same time, but, alas, I am about a decade too late for it, sometimes more.

The most recent example is an info pdf about a medieval manuscript summer school, held in Leipzig. In case you are interested, or know somebody who might be, the website is at https://www.ub.uni-leipzig.de/forschungsbibliothek/sommerkurs-handschriftenkultur, and this is the pdf flyer in question:

I have, for a change, actually managed to clear some papers off the stack on my desk. The little cat approves, as she now has a bit more space to place her furry hindquarters (though mostly she places herself all in front of me, between the laptop and the edge of the table). Outside it's still fairly cold and grey, some snow is left on the streets (especially here right in front of our house) and some on the grassy areas, but there's much less now than a week ago. And I've already received the first emails telling me that I should think of buying seeds for the next season.

Also, it looks like there will be some stuff going to be made for an exhibition next year, which really delights me. Not just because that will mean nice photos of the process, once it's running! 

With the discussions about the exhibition, in regard to what is possible and what is not, I have realised that it would be really, really nice and cool (and also helpful) to have a sort of a nationwide register (even better would be a register and warehouse) for all those things made for temporary exhibitions and then without proper use afterwards. There's so many amazing things getting researched and made, and many of those will later on just disappear into some storage room. Or worse.

So... if anyone has an idea on how to make this a project, preferably with some funding for its long-term establishment... please let me know. I'd love to see this.

First of all, the breeches are finished, have been tried on and tested, and they fit well (much improved, actually, by the set-in gores between leg and middle part) but were hard-ish to put on because the belt is too short to keep it together while pulling them up. That resulted in some fishing for the belt ends afterwards.

No pictures yet, as I want to do their first showing at the conference in the presentation, but I am very happy with the piece, and they do look quite similar to what can be seen on images.

Other stuff that is going on: Paying bills (sigh), doing some bureaucracy stuff (which will ensure some payment later, so yay) and, of course, the neverending ongoing work on... the translation of the thesis. There's been progress translation-wise, and I have now gotten to the start of the catalogue, and there I stumbled across a specific German term that I don't really know how to translate.

In German, there's the term "erheben" (like in uplifting, or in getting up if you do it yourself, but that is not the case here) used in the context of making a saint. Erhebung is when the body is exhumed with the intention of venerating it and placing the bones in some reliquiary, or in some other position where they can be venerated. (It includes the good old time-honoured Catholic practise of splitting off some tiny fragments and selling them off to other places so they can use it for stuff including naming a church and dedicating the main altar to the original owner of the splinter.) So if you are writing about some saintly guy or gal and the text says that their Erhebung was at this or that point in time, it's very clear what is meant.

This, it turns out, is one of the things that are hard to google. Erheben, after all, means a range of other things as well. German Wikipedia has an article on just this (yay!) but there is no version in any other language, especially not in English (grrr, plan thwarted). A quick use of the search engines revealed that the Duck (I say I would google it, but I use duckduckgo) is very willing to tell me everything about the cardiac thingy called ST elevation, which it will helpfully convert my "saint elevatio english" into, but not about English church-y terminology. So.

Does anyone here happen to know how that would translate, precisely, into English?

There was some more stitching, and now the breeches are all finished, and waiting to be tried on and tested. I am looking forward to that! It was already very interesting to see their transformation from a weird, very large piece of fabric to something definitely trouser-like once the belt was added to the picture.

I'm also still very much delighted by the stitches used - with some more pondering (which there is time for, with the stitching, as you might know) I finally realised that the variation of the seam means that everything on the piece can be done with a variation of whip-stitching. Which is... nice. Especially if you love this kind of seam. 

(In case you wondered: I'm fine with it, but am not totally and utterly enamoured with it. There you go.)

Well, well, well. There has been some more stitching, and as soon as I have typed this blog entry and pulled my arm out from underneath Madame the Cat, I will stitch on some more... but here's a bit of interesting stuff for you.

There's the One Big Linen Garment find from archaeology - the Viborg shirt. That piece has been analysed and reconstructed very nicely, with a result of finding a lot of different whipstitch seam variations, all cunningly and neatly adapted to a) what was available in terms of how many pieces of fabric to join, b) whether these were cut edges or selvedges, and c) how the seam was supposed to look (hint: most times, the answer to that was "flat").

Imagine my delight when I found out that the braies I'm looking at currently seem to employ similarly creative and very smart uses of whipstitch seams. Also my puzzlement when I realised that the seams I'd taken for the normal, common, household variety of a felled seam was something else.

I'm not a hundred percent sure yet whether my attempt has cracked it, but at least you can enjoy these images of crazy seams in comparison. First of all, the "normal" felled seam variety:

You can see that there's a clearly visible stitch line from the first seam, then the whip stitches from the felled seam allowances. Now here's the variation: 

I hope you can also see (and appreciate) how crazy tiny these are. It's about 3 mm seam width on the original, and I tried hard to match this, with more or less success, depending. At some point I'll need to see the back of these seams to find out whether my solution matches the original, but whether it does or not, it's a fun variation that makes use of the selvedge - it's not a normal seam through the two layers, with the edges staggered apart by one final seamwidth, but a fold of the fabric with the cut edge (two seamwidth wide) whipped to the selvedge of the other fabric, and then the allowance folded and whipped down. It's much nicer to work than the fiddly very narrow normal version, and makes smart use of the selvedge, in a way that (at least to my way of thinking) fits in very well with the general tendency to make use of the very useful selvedge when making clothes.

So. What do you think? Or have you even seen something like that before?

I'm still working on this underpants reconstruction project, and it's alternatingly breathtakingly delightful and slightly frustrating. There was maths involved of which I thought it would be simple, but it's not quite as simple as my first idea.

Some pieces of it really fit well together in my brain and are genius, and then I try to do the same stuff with my large, freshly-washed cloud of fine linen fabric (because this type of underwear is, well, reeeeaaaaally large), and of course it's still making sense but not quite as easy to do as one would hope for.

Actually, that has been the case so, so many times when I was doing reconstruction work: Stuff you look at and then get quite apprehensive because you are convinced it will be really difficult and a huge problem and you have no idea beforehand on how to do it just... happens, everything falls into place, and it's a total breeze. On the other hand, things that you glance at and your brain goes "ah, okeydokey, that's clear as crystal and will be no problem whatsoever, it's obviously easy-peasy to do" will stump you, frustrate you, and be obnoxiously difficult in at least five unexpected ways.

Really. This happened so often that now a part of my brain goes "uh-oh" when the other part goes "ah, okey-dokey, easy-peasy", and I sort of brace myself for "issues, multiple, unexpected" in any and all cases. It's still somehow weird to see it happen.

So... please excuse me while I go handle a little bit of shop stuff, and then return to my cloud of delightful fine linen fabric that tries to thwart my attempts at turning it into a near-perfect recreation of these medieval underpants...

In connection with the sprang cap I made for a museum exhibition, there will also be a sprang workshop - at Burg Trausnitz near Landshut, on June 27. The day starts with a guided tour through the exhibition, and then there's a lunch break, and then there's the workshop. I'm already looking forward to this, it's far too rarely that I get to teach sprang... and maybe I can manage to get the for-fun piece that I currently have on the frame done until then.

(Actually, I should, as it's on one of the workshop frames...)

If you are interested, you can go here to find out more about the (German language) workshop!