I'm off to the EAA conference in Belfast! Which means that a) today has been a whirlwind of getting things sorted out so everything is ready for me to leave, and b) I will be off the blog for a while.

However, to keep you amused while I am gone, you can check out the brand-new publication now available as pdf about "Fashioning the Viking Age". That was a research project that included reconstructions of Viking Age textile tools and Viking Age garments - and the first two volumes are finished and downloadable for free on the project's web pages. 

And with this, I'm off to conferencey adventures, followed by some family stuff - so I will be back on the blog on September 12.

We've recently seen the  "Ball im Savoy", which is something like a lightweight opera version (Operette) that was written in the 1930s. The version that we enjoyed (vastly!) was gently modernised and shortened, according to the information given by the theatre, and it was fantastic. (The Cologne ensemble did a guest staging at the Luisenburg Wunsiedel, which is a very lovely open-air stage.)

The reason for the cuts, by the way, was given too - some of the text and songs were rather "-istic" in some way. Racist, mysogynist, etcetera, so not really what one would want to have on a stage today, at least not in the theatre equivalent of a feelgood movie.

Afterwards, we looked up some more of it on Youtube... and stumbled across one of the songs that did not make the cut into the version that we saw. The English translation of the title is "when we Turcs kiss".

We listened to this, and we were really confused by the singer's accent. It sounds like the aim is to sound "foreign", but to our ears, it was all the wrong foreign, because he states that he's from Turkey. That's not a Turkish accent!

And that is when we realised... today's German people are all very, very familiar with Turkish accents, because of the influx of Turkish people in the 1950s and 1960s. But this was written and performed in 1932, when things were still quite different. Which explains why the accent is "generic foreign" and not "generic mock-Turkish" as it would be when a modern German imitated the typical accent...

Funny, and slightly weird, isn't it? And also an amazing example about how little things in art change, and how our perceptions and receptions change.

Belfast and the EAA are drawing nearer and nearer - so I'm packing and preparing. There was a bit more spinning of membrane thread today, to have a little more of a sample to show around at the conference, and some more packing and writing of lists and so on. 

 I've also done a little more other spinning - cotton this time, trying to reproduce a cotton yarn used in some non-European fabrics. It was very nice to return to cotton spinning (which I have not done very often), and a bit of a challenge to hit the right thickness (hint: it was not very thick) with the high twist required. It definitely is a rather slow process. Now the thread will go to my colleague, who will take a look at it and see if that would match her requirements, and then we'll see.

There was also some Textile Forum planning stuff (the preliminary programme has been updated, and you can find it here). I'm already very excited about all the workshops, we will be exploring so many aspects of the colour red.

And now it's time to wrap up the day, get some more packing done, and update the lists of things that have to be done before I leave for Northern Ireland. The presentation is already finished and only needs another practise run or two, the materials to show are prepared, and hopefully there will soon be a login for the conference app so that planning which session to attend where will be a little easier... because that, of course, is a challenge with about 40 sessions running in parallel, and a lot of interesting topics to choose from!

I stumbled across a post about knitting cables (1/1 cables, to be exact) in different ways (which was, however, not very substantial), and that brought to mind again the many very detailed and very cool posts on the Techknitter's blog, and on a whim I looked it up again. I had noticed a long while ago that the blog seemed to be on hiatus. 

As many blogs who go off for a while do that to never return, that was sort of what I had expected. So I was very pleasantly surprised that the Technknitter is back! (I also discovered the reason for the hiatus.)

So if you're looking for knitting tricks such as how to make jogless stripes, or how to fix curling scarves, or how to handle several colours at once - go check out the blog. It is a fantastic resource, with really neat solutions for a lot of knitting problems, very well explained and nicely illustrated. Even if it's something I'm pretty sure I will not use in my knitting, I still enjoyed reading the posts about it!

It is abysmally hot and humid here - it feels like a sauna, really. In spite of the heat and humidity, there is some cycling to be done for errands that have to be run, and there's also some apples waiting to be cooked into apple sauce and then canned. So... plenty of hot work ahead! I am already looking forward to my trip to the conference in Belfast, where it will probably be much cooler, due to the sea being close by.

The trick to cycling in this weather is, by the way, to go just fast enough so the airstream is cooling you down, but not so fast that the heat generated by the effort is more than the airstream can cool away. Which is especially hard to impossible if going uphill. Also: Traffic lights, the bane of airstream.

(Fun fact: Even paddling, which is a really slow way of getting forward, will generate some airstream that is actually noticeably cooling. We were joking once, when taking a break on a river, that we should get back to paddling again because of the nice, cool "Fahrtwind"... and then we started paddling and realised that there actually was enough of it to make things much more comfortable.) 

Ötzi has been the centerpoint of a lot of research over the years, and has led to quite a few revisions of our image of his time. Now, recent research on his genome has also revealed that he probably was bald... and had dark skin. Well, there you go - he's always good for a little surprise!

You can read the full article about the genome analysis here. 

Because I have a few pictures left from my recent photography trip to the garden, here you go: 

That are  leadwort flowers. It's a nice plant, blooming blue and rather robust (like, as mentioned, about all the things growing in our garden). They are not getting too many visitors currently, but that's probably because there is a lot of competition... and occasionally, a bee or bumblebee are enthusiastically making their way from one flower to the next.

There's more flowers on the other side of our fence, growing from underneath the willows. I've always found it lovely when flowers peek out of a garden, into the street, making the public space (which is usually drab, grey, and rather boring) a little bit more colourful and pretty. And now our own plants do that too!

And finally, some minstrel bugs doing, well, what they feel they should do: 

Did I mention the many, many grasshoppers also active at the moment? The bee hotels are sort of mostly on hiatus at the moment, with very little activity (most of the slots are taken, and hopefully young bees are developing inside), so there's not much going on there. But the meadow is full of grasshoppers making their grasshoppery noises, a concert that goes on all day and most of the night, swelling and ebbing and altogether wonderful to listen to.

Here's some of the musicians:  

The different species also sound quite differently - it really is fascinating! 

This is, to our very great delight, the first year where something attractive to insects has been in flower at all times - no gaps at all! There were times in the previous years where there was not much going on, flower-wise, so we tried to close that gap. Successfully.

Some of the plants are wild, some are cultured, but all of them are pretty robust, because my gardening style can best be described as "demented squirrel" - plant or sow the seeds, and then completely forget about it. If things go well, I'm then pleasantly surprised about the thing coming up (and usually remember that yes, there was something...) and if things don't go well, that plant obviously has no place in our garden. 

Currently in the prime position of things doing their thing? Wild parsnip. 

The Most Patient Husband of Them All and I both agree that these are, well, not the prettiest of plants. Actually, I find them relatively ugly... which normally would mean that I pull most of them out, and free some space for other things to take over.

But. Oh, there's a big but: The flowers, and the developing seed stands, are teeming with insect life. TEEMING. As in there is a cloud of flying critters around them all day long.

These plants are the preferred meeting-and-mating spot for minstrel bugs.  Plus there's a huge range of different flies, mostly hover flies, hanging out there. One or two hornets are commonly seen around as well, on the hunt for some juicy prey (though I've not seen a successful attack yet).

Which means... we are in total agreement that these ugly green-yellow guys are welcome to stay, and grow, and do their thing. After all, there's space enough for other things as well, and every flower that helps insect life in our day and time is more than welcome, and oh so necessary.

To our great delight, Jessica Grimm, fellow archaeologist and professional embroideress, has agreed to do some testing of the membrane silver threads we made. 

(Jessica also teaches embroidery, both in-person and online. Do check out her page if you're interested!

And... we got first results! One of the sample batches was, as expected, not holding up too well, but shed some silver. (I think we messed up with that membrane, as there was glue on it....) Another one also shed some silver - that was a sample silvered with no glue at all. The others all held up rather well, and the test also showed that these threads are much more supple than if they were done with solid metal strips. (Also not entirely unexpected, but then you never know...)

That is a very nice result to get before the conference in Belfast. Now I'll have to think about how to shoehorn in one more sentence without going over time!