It really feels like summer currently - and it's definitely "thirsty weather". We've started placing a flat bowl of water outside every night when we stack the hedgehog snackhouse, and it has definitely been appreciated: 

Quite a few of the guys go for a snack, then a drink; some only come for the water. The Early Hedgehog, who turns up sometime between nine and ten, usually only eats and runs away, but it's quite possible that he has some other source of water.

The pointy guys are definitely enjoying their tiny pool, though! Some go on to drink for the full two minutes that the camera records at a time. By contrast, the birdbath that we installed already last year gets pointedly ignored...

By pure chance, I realised two days ago that the mobile menu in my homepage does not behave as it should anymore... which inspired me to do what I thought of as a quick little fix to get it from "extend submenu items on click", which did not work, to "have items permanently open" which is not ideal, but better than having most of the pages inaccessible.

The whole thing resulted in me being unable to access the page. That was... unexpected. It also took me way, waaay too long to realise the error was something out of my reach to fix. So I contacted my hoster (who I still maintain is the utter and absolute best, and if you need someone to host you, I do recommend Schwarzkünstler, who has always helped me fix the things that I usually caused myself by bumbling around and doing something stupid). He let me know that this error was only limited to my own IP address (phew!) and fixed it (double phew! and to my grand appreciation in the evening way after normal work hours). 

I'm still not sure how I managed to kick myself out, but, well. I learned stuff (always good!), the issue is hopefully fixed now, I sort of have a plan on what to do with the rest that I should have taken care of an unholy time ago, and I can go back to the things that were actually on the list to do yesterday, and which all have deadlines as well. Um. 

(You can imagine, I think, that the website issue induced panic meant about nothing of the other stuff happened. Sigh.)

That said - if you run into any issues on the page, whether shop, blog, or main pages, please please do let me know. I am trying to look things over and give them a check after every change or update, but the pages are that large these days that chances are very high I will miss stuff. Especially since it also depends on browsers and stuff.

On the plus side, I did put in some extra "Aaaaaaaaaargh" time yesterday evening puzzling over the Alpirsbach hose again, and trying to find out where things went askew (literally, as there's way too much twist in the legs). Good news: I have pinpointed the issue, with the kind thinking help of the Most Patient Husband of Them All. Bad news: To fix it, I'll have to undo the whole test piece. Which I will not do right now, but instead try a second version and try to do that correctly this time around. And then... the Real Thing (TM). Wish me luck.

This year, the season was not too short or too awkwardly placed in the year (as it was last year, due to some weird reason...) and there was the traditional rhubarb cake. 

It's not quite as big a thing as asparagus in Germany (but then, there's few things that can aspire to that), but I really like rhubarb. Especially if it's in combination with Streusel. In contrast to strawberries, which I like just as much or sometimes even better on their own, rhubarb also profits from getting baked, or cooked, so there's no issues with too much of it disappearing before touching the cake base.

Last year there was too many other things going on, and too much being away, so we didn't get around to baking The Rhubarb Cake, which is a firm favourite here. Unfortunately (as otherwise it would be too good to be true) it does require a little bit of work, and some time to make it, so it's not a quick thing you throw together inbetween other stuff. And then you also need to eat it ; ) 

Anyways, there was rhubarb and time this year, so we now have the best of rhubarb cakes (in our opinion). If you're curious and would like to know the recipe... I've blogged about it before, so here you go.

It's so hot here, by the way, that we now have nightly sightings of hedgehogs taking a drink from the flat bowl of water we are placing out for them. Which, now that I'm thinking about it, would make a grand excuse to get some iced coffee and a piece of cake and sit outside here. Mh. Right now. 

There's a new ressource online - a study platform and archive about French and Italian fashion terms. If that is for you, head over to the Modarchive and enjoy! I have only taken a short look yet, but it includes a dictionary/glossary called ModTERM and an image search tool ModSCAPE. All platforms are free to access; for ModSCAPE, you will need to get a password through a simple procedure.

In other news, Pentecost is right on the doorstep, and so I will be doing what every good German does on Monday: Have a day off. (Yay!) The weekend needs to see some gardening done, as it's time for the tomato plants to move out. 

So with this butterfly image, I wish you a lovely (long, if you have it) weekend! 

With the last Textile Forum focusing on tablet weaving, I was preparing for running empty (or almost empty) of tablets due to that... which didn't happen, because most participants brought their own.

But still, stocks were running low, so I started on the quest of getting more. For this, you need a) something to punch them, b) someone to do the punching, and c) something to use the punching tool on. The first two were comparatively simple, but finding a good source for the right material... wasn't.

The old ones I had were made of some special kind of cardboard with a very good stability in both directions, and quite firm if you press on the sides, and a not-horrible colour (brownish).  It took a bit of looking around before I found out that it's indeed a special kind of cardboard, and then it took a while longer to realise that bookbinding and other paper-workery stuff are only a side use of the material, and that it's mainly used for isolation in electronics. 

Then it took a while to sort out the possibilities of sourcing it there. And finally, I could get the stuff for not as horrendously a price as it would have been through bookbinding suppliers. 

The punching tool, by the way, looks like this:

I also learned that there's a specific lingo to all the punching stuff, too, which was fun - as was the tour of the local printing press who ended up doing the punching step, and who were really lovely and nice all along.

The tablets are looking just like the old ones - so that was a success, I'd say. And now I have stock again for a good, long while!

There's actually not so much to update - the trial piece is about finished, with one of the feet done and the other half-done. As usual, the small bits are taking longer than they should. There's a try-on planned for this evening when we will see if the foot makes everything just so, or if there's... deeper issues underlying.

The fabric for the Real Thing is on its way here, and I am very, very much looking forward to fondling it! Since I got a lot of updates, and we had some discussions during the process on how to solve the (many smaller and larger) problems, it feels a little bit like I was there, but I could never touch. Soon, that will be remedied.

Also, I need to get some stuff here sorted better, and some other things finally photographed and placed into the shop. Somehow there was too much of this and that and whatnot the last weeks, and unfortunately I've never been one for night shifts done extra. (Well, I can do it to an extent if there's something burning, but it's usually not such a good idea and tends to take its toll.)

This time, it's German, and it's about tablet weaving, and it is - you might have guessed it - the next one in the row of Kaptorga podcasts. It was lovely to veer off topic again with Johnny and Adam (though I still think we did do better this time!). 

So if you understand German, and don't mind trying to imagine tablet weaving actions in your mind, here you go: