I'm on the conference about colours in the middle ages, "Farbiges Mittelalter" in Bamberg. The conference will last until Thursday, but since I'm a bit stressed right now, regular blogging will resume next Monday.

It has taken us longer than we hoped to find a new date, but at last, the search was successful. Now we don't have a too tight schedule or an overlap with the planned dates of either of the two conflicting conferences, the EXAR conference 2009 in Hungary and the Conference for Archaeological Dyes and Dyeing.

The new date is even a bit earlier in the year, which hopefully means warmer and overall slightly better weather. The Textilforum will take place in the beautiful Open Air Museum in Eindhoven, Netherlands, from the 8th to 13th of September. If you are interested in historical textile crafts, this might be the place for you!

You can find more information at the forum website www.textilforum.org, where you can also subscribe for the forum newsletter, bringing you news and notice of updates of the site. Or contact me if you have questions.

First things first, and a happy, healthy and successful year 2009 to all you readers out there!

I'm back home since yesterday in the afternoon, but today and tomorrow are still for rest and relaxation, before work starts again. I started the new year with a bout of 'flu or something like it, and so I'll be going easy tomorrow.

2008 for me was full of exciting things, and the most sparklingly important happenings for me were finishing my thesis (I handed it in at the end of March) and successfully defending it in July. The first half of the year thus was filled with alternately stressing (much) and trying to de-stress; the latter with one short trip to Berlin (with a concert given by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain) and one long trip to Copenhagen. The Denmark trip was not overly much destressing, though, since I also went to NESAT, but a wonderful experience. I went hunting for a publisher for my thesis, which was exhilarating, and I learned a lot about the publishing process while reading up about the business and putting the materials together. I also thought a lot about the future, money, insurances and how I want to make the money I need, and I will find out in 2009 whether freelancing only is possible for me. Our main holiday trip was spent canoeing on the Mecklenburger Seenplatte, and it was wonderful and very quiet, since we went rather late in the year. I had a stressful though fun order for a new exhibition that will come up as soon as the building in Hartenstein is finished, and that saw me busy through most of September and all of October. Not that I've not been busy since - there is next year's summer season to prepare, since I have a few medieval events on my calendar already; I have a conference to attend in March and a talk to give in January; and a bunch of other things to prepare and write besides.

Alltogether, 2008 has been a good and very successful year for me, and I hope that 2009 will turn out as well - for me and for you, too.

... and so I'm doubly excited about next October! Why? Because we are organising a get-together for historical textile crafts at the wonderful open air museum in Eindhoven.

I have heard a lot of people in the last years utter something like "it is a pity that living history and current research don't communicate more". And we could surely all profit from more and better communication and better sharing of experiences. But how, and where? During the Exar conference in Oldenburg last October, we decided to give it a try and organise such a meet-up possibility.
At long last, there will be a place and time for professionals, researchers and living history/reenactment people to get together and hopefully learn from each other.

Today I spent the whole morning getting the website up and running, just so you can have a sneak peek at www.textilforum.org (and so I can finally spill the beans about it). There are no pictures yet and of course we don't have the full programme already, but you can subscribe to the newsletter and get an update whenever the website or our planning does.

If you are working in historical textile crafts, do take a look - and I hope that you get as thrilled about the Textilforum as we are!

I feel like I've never done so much planning so far in advance before, and this might be true. After all, this is my first year of working freelance in full-time, not just part-time in addition to studies.

All these dates and deadlines and things that are already filling up my calender make me a little queasy in the stomach region, but on the other hand, I get really excited about them. At least I won't be dying of boredom next year! There is a bunch of conferences during the year, some that I have already applied for and more that would love to go to - and how can you not want to go to a conference that calls for papers like Borderlines XIII? Though there's a family birthday on that date, which is kind of sad since I can't be there and here at the same time. Then I need to figure out how much time all my projects will eat, so I don't plan too many trips and conferences.

For the moment, I have two presentations/lectures coming up, one in January and one in March, at the conference about colours in the Middle ages, so it is time to prepare for those. Powerpoint, here I come!