These are rare - very rare, but obviously they do exist: job offers in the field of experimental archaeology. Case in point? The ArcheoBark project, which is looking for someone to fill their vacancy. So if you're looking for a job for 18 months, starting next spring, reconstructing and making bark vessels, you can read more about the job and how to apply here.  

It's weird how fast a year can fly by - and somehow hard to believe that 2024 is almost done and gone already. A lot of things happened in these twelve months, from the preparation and opening of the exhibition in Bamberg to several conferences (including a NESAT, which is always something special) and workshops for different groups, some demonstrations and of course the European Textile Forum (which deserves its own mention and not just being lumped under "conferences". There was a lot of train travel (including overnight trains), and some loading up the car and going places with big amounts of stuff. All in all, for me, it was a very, very nice year that is now drawing to a close.

So yesterday I've taken care of some administrative stuff, and tried to sort my way through some stacks of old paperwork. Then we finally had a visit from someone to fix some of our ailing window shutters - so with a bit of this and that in addition, that day just flew by. And then I somehow managed not to realise that this blogpost, which was intended to get published, didn't make its way through.

Which means you're getting it today, when more of the sorting and some packing of parcels happened. And now for the post run, so the things will go out today! 

Feeling lonely at work is, it seems, not uncommon - even if you're not a solo freelancer like I am. (Funnily, I don't feel lonely - there's usually so much contact with other people via mail, and enough interaction with customers and colleagues, that I don't suffer from this.) 

Because feeling lonely is not very nice and not very healthy, the Institute for Life at Work is doing a survey about workplace loneliness. If you're interested, you can read more about their work here, and take the survey about your own work loneliness scale here.

I've had a wonderful, if quite short, time in Uppsala at the Material Literacy workshop. It was planned as a rather short stint, but ended up being even shorter due to a massive train delay. Fortunately I could follow the part I'd have missed otherwise on Zoom! 

It was wonderful to meet some old friends and colleagues again,  and meet new people. There were fruitful discussions and lots of looks in detail at wonderful textiles. Hopefully there will be more on the topic of material literacy - I think it's a very helpful term for being able to read objects, and having some properly structured, thought-out lessons or schooling on that will surely be very useful for many people.

We finished with a little excursion into the church museum, and I was very happy to see the Golden Gown again.. It's been so many years since I was there last.

On the way back, there was time for a short stroll through Stockholm (well, some of it!) and a bit of food shopping before going back in the night train. I managed to find a nice small Christmas market there, so back at home, we were able to enjoy some freshly imported ostkaka:

I had not heard of that before coming across it on the Christmas market, but I got to try it there, and it was very nice. It's served warm, with the option of adding whipped cream and jam or something fruity, which we did when we had it here. Definitely recommend it!

The way back had just a little delay overall, so I was home in the afternoon, one hour later than planned originally. Now there's no travel until the end of the work year... which is also nice. There's a stack of things waiting to go to the post tomorrow morning, and I'm looking forward to doing some maintenance work during the winter break. The cat also approves to have her cuddle spot on the desk appropriately staffed again!

3I'm off to a workshop in Sweden, so I'll spend tonight in a nice night train bed, to arrive way up north the next morning. I'm already looking forward to this a huge lot!

There will be no blog posts until Monday - but until then, you might be as amused as I was by the fact that the numbering of rulers (as in kings, not the draw-a-straight-line-thingie) is not as uniquely identifying as one might thinks. At least I used to think so... until I stumbled across Rudolph. The first. Or third. Or sixth, all depending on what you are looking at. The German wikipedia article lists it up nicely in the first sentence....

I do confess I was a little annoyed as well. What do I call him when I write about his grave garments now? I.? III? Or something entirely different? At least there's not an abundance of Rudolphs with rags, that makes things easier...

You might have heard about the interesting fact that the decline in the number of births looks similar like the decline in the number of storks... and as every legend-savvy German knows, it's the stork that brings the babies. So. No more storks, no more babies, right?

Just that correlation is not causation. Nicest and funniest bit about that that I know is this XKCD:

And if you're amused by spurious correlations, there's a whole website about this that you might enjoy!  

I'm looking forward to going into the weekend now - maybe there will even be a little snow, as it's gotten quite a lot colder here the last few days.  I'll send you (and me) off into the weekend with this photo of my "Mayan Weaving":

The extra sticks you can see were our try of understanding how to make the pattern sheds for the additional wefts - and we did figure out how to do it after a bit of messing around. 

Now I only need to get a little better at the general weaver-tensioned weaving, and more even selvedges...