Sometimes, sometimes there's something and I have no clue on what to do, and then... I start asking people. More often than not, surprising things come out of this, like new solutions I had never thought of, or help that is more helpful that I had hoped for, and - in the case that I have asked for help, which I have learned to do with little shame by now in most cases, and am working on the remaining bits of awkwardness - a happy side result is being even more connected to the people involved than before.

What I want to say with this, basically, is: You can always ask. If you end up with something that you are not quite happy with, you can always ask why this is like that, and if there's as possibility to make things better. If you do not know something, you can always ask to learn more (even if it feels like you should know more... because each of us has some holes in their knowledge, and trying to cover them up will probably, in the long run, be worse than just owning them and being able to fill them. If there is something that does not fit your needs, maybe the folks providing it just have no idea, and are actually happy to get your feedback. And if you need help... you can always ask for it. There's no guarantee that you will get help, because the folks you asked might not have the means to give you a hand, or the inclination, so the trick is to ask with hope but without expectation. And then, if you get help, you might not end up with the kind of help you expected but maybe something different. (There's another trick to being able to accept what you get, even if it's not exactly like you imagined it to be, or it's not how you would have done it. If it does the job, it's fine and merits a thank you and some warm appreciation. And that, too, is a thing that gets easier with practice, actually - just like the asking itself.)

So, you might go out, and take your deep breath and pull yourself together and manage to ask the question, and it might come to nothing. But in many cases, there's probably a happy surprise waiting for you if you ask about things, or for things. Sometimes you need to be persistent and ask a lot of people, for a long time. (I think it took me a dozen years or more to find someone to make medieval-style shears for me, and yes, that was very, very frustrating at times.) Sometimes it doesn't work out at all. Sometimes you get what you thought you were looking for, and realise it's not the bee's knees your mind hyped it up to be... but I would always recommend to keep talking to people, and to keep asking.

The other half of this, of course, is to be open when people ask you about something. If you can help, offer it. Even if it's just an answer, and email back, or making a contact to someone else who might be able to help better than you. That doesn't mean you will have to drop everything you are doing or change your life at the drop of a hat, or at any request - everyone should have boundaries, and so should you. But you will have space to do stuff even with a full schedule. It might be small, but it will still be something.

"Be kind" is one of the sign-offs on the Escape Artist podcasts (which you might know are dear to my heart). It's a good motto to live with, I think. 

... this blog software tries to drive me crazy - for instance when it remembers some date of a draft and refuses to change it when the stuff is published. No, I don't want you to list this as "published on August Backwhenever" when I actually do publish it on October Today! Argh.

These small annoyances aside, I'll be off today to get a vaccine shot and then to have the car tyres changed to winter tyres. Why is everything happening in autumn time? It's almost like it's the training school for pre-Xmas-stress! (Though thankfully that is not a big issue in my life.)

Anyway - since I will be doing some extra time-of-year-related things the next few days, blogging will probably be sporadic. I plan to, but it's not too realistic that I will get around to it (and there are other tasks that are actually both important and time-critical to do, so... expect me when you see me.) 

There's... rather a lot going on here now, with the upcoming events and the incoming colder season (which means stuff like changing the car tyres to winter tyres, and getting the garden ready for frost). So I'm not unhappy at all that tomorrow is a public holiday here in Germany: The Day of German Unity. 

Fun fact: Wikipedia says there's a celebration held each year - and yes, that may be true, but most people here just enjoy a day off that is at the same date every year - so it's also nice to plan around this. Back when I started doing Living History, one of the events always took place on October 3 and the nearest weekend, so you could use the days between (before or after the weekend) to have an extra-long weekend, and more time at the event. I've never even heard about any official-ish celebrations before stumbling across the Wikipedia article.

Anyways - for me, that's a day off tomorrow, and for you that means enjoy some blog-free time until I am back on Monday. (Unless I totally forget to blog again, like I did yesterday. Oops.)

We're definitely in autumn now - leaves are slowly losing their green colour, apples and pears are ripening, and the Crazy Season is starting. Or at least it feels like every year in the autumn, things are happening all the time!

Thus I will be off the blog for a few days while I am teaching in Switzerland. I will be back on Tuesday next week, and then I can keep you updated on my (hopefully not too frantic) work on my conference paper for the Instrumentum Colloque in France in October.

And after that, if we want to look as far into the future... the Textile Forum will try to eat up every little bit of brain I have. I'm already looking forward to that!

A long while ago, I chatted with Adam from Kaptorga, and the podcasting thing came up, and we both found that it might be fun to do a podcast at some point. 

Quite a bit later, that actually happened. (Fun fact: I do my recordings in our wardrobe. It's small and there's a lot of fabric in there, so acoustics are good. This time, I had the laptop outside to do the recording, and halfway through, it went out of juice... )

It's all in German, but if you do understand German - here it is:

...except the usual. Some more planning, some more prepping, some cake baking in preparation for the weekend, when there's a birthday in the family to be celebrated. 

But maybe you will find this video of a spinning mule from Leeds interesting as well: 

And you can read a little more about the machines here on the museum page. 

If you're a regular reader here, you'll know that I have a thing for coffee. (If you didn't, well, you know now.) I also have a thing for tableware, having grown up in a town where there was a lot of china production.

So I was rather delighted about the new virtual exhibition of coffee tableware from the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek - and it's also available in English for everyone not reading German to enjoy. There's a few pretty weird things in there, and I'm not sure if I've ever seen a Barttasse before. (That is a cup with a special little bar to protect your shaped and waxed moustache from your hot beverage. Probably, now that I think of it, not only to keep the coffee from deforming your whiskerage, but also from keeping your products involved in said shape from, um, enhancing the flavour of your coffee.