With the pandemic still wreaking havoc on all plans for cons and such, I'm utterly delighted to be part of an online convention: Flights of Foundry!

It's getting better still: The con is free to join! You can register via the website link above. It will take place on Discord (mostly) on April 16-19 (depending on your timezone) and there's a lot of programming planned already. Around the clock, to give everyone from everywhere the opportunity to join in for interesting and exciting things.

Just like I did at the actual real WorldCons that I went to in the past, I will hang out in the dealer's room, and I'll give a presentation about medieval spinning techniques! That will be on Sunday, 13:00 German time. It's all very exciting, and I'm very much looking forward to this. How good that there's still a bit of time to figure out how everything will work...

 

So what else is there to tell about my Dublin adventures? There was a talk about medieval textiles and textile crafts, which was very well received according to what I heard afterwards. I had the pleasure of sharing that panel with Jeannette Ng, who later during the convention accepted her award for Best New Writer (congratulations again!).

I also enjoyed my two other panels (proper panels, not talks, this time) about archaeology in SFF, and about costume research and documentation.

I also got to meet (and hold, for a short time) this guy:



and I got to meet a real Lady Astronaut, as Dr. Jeannette Epps was at the convention. Which was a "wow" moment as well.

There also was cake (because life is better with cake, even if it is only store-bought chocolate cake from Tesco's), and weird chocolate both from Ireland (Cadbury's Mint Oreo. Delicious, if you ask me.) and from Germany (I brought some Knusperflocken for people to try) and from New Zealand (which will host next year's convention) and, if you are generous in what you count as chocolate, choc-covered malty caramel Timtams from Australia.

Finally, one of the really nice things about WorldCon is how easy it is to meet people, and chat with them, making new acquaintances and learning things about their bits of the world. I was delighted to see again quite a number of people I'd last met in London, back in 2014 (one of whom saved my voice by bringing me a pack of Fisherman's Friends). Even though there's never a load of time to catch up, it was wonderful to see them again and chat. It was also totally delightful to see so many authors, whose work I love to read, and it felt like so many of them stopped at my table in the hall and enjoyed seeing (and, in some cases, buying) something completely different. (Which were the moments when I silently went "squeee!" in the back of my head. As you do. Right?).

All this would never have happened if not for Gillian prodding me to come to London in 2014 (because apparently, London is right around the corner from Erlangen, if you ask an Aussie) and for my wonderful Irish friend helping me out at the table, making it possible for me to sneak away to my programme items, the Escape Artists Live panel, and, occasionally, even to the toilet:



Thank you! (Also, I'm still bad at taking phone selfies. Obviously.)

 

I mentioned badge ribbons in yesterday's post, and some of you may have wondered what that is. This is one of the things I was introduced to back in London, at my first WorldCon, and I had so much fun with them back then already, which was repeated this year in Dublin. But I should explain first...

When you have an attending membership and turn up at the con registration, you are getting a badge with your name on it (or a badge name/alias/nick, whatever you put in the form when you got your membership), where you come from, and your membership number. This is your pass to enter the convention and all its panels and so on.

Underneath that plastic badge, you can stick ribbons - which are printed textile ribbons with a sticky stripe, (hopefully) in the width of the lower edge of the badge. You get "official" ribbons if you are a programme participant, dealer, or otherwise involved with the con; or if you are a Hugo finalist. You can also get ribbons from various other places - from authors, groups or societies, and from individuals who had an idea for a ribbon, had some made and now hand them out to those who ask.



There are some people (especially children) who make it a game to get as many ribbons as they can, and I've seen some kids walk around with a trail of ribbons that was about three times as long as they were tall. My haul was not huge - tiny in comparison, in fact - but each of them made me ridiculously happy. I got the "lack of yarn" handed out of the blue by someone passing my table, and thus could not even tell others who had given it to me, having no clear memory of the person in question. That was different for the "shiny" ribbon, whose maker walked around with a Kaylee parasol, and thus was relatively easy to spot. The TANSTAAFL came, of course, from the Heinlein Society table - it's one of my favourite bits of Heinlein's writing, and I was looking forward to getting one of these even before the con started... and the Cast of Wonders ribbon, obviously, also makes me happy, being one of their narrators.

So. Ribbons. Some don't care for them, some collect them, and it's definitely a thing at WorldCon. Plus they are a good conversation starter should you need one!

Dublin was... exciting, and wonderful, even though getting there was a tiny bit scary - I knew I'd be travelling alone, and taking two large suitcases. Plus a backpack. Plus a handbag... maxing out my luggage allowance on all counts.

[caption id="attachment_4776" align="alignnone" width="412"] Tell me again who is going to be lugging all this to Dublin?


Because I was rather nervous about not making the airport in time, I took a really early train, which meant, of course, that everything went smoothly and I arrived with plenty of time to spend knitting at the airport. Changing trains was also going well - I did have a helping hand for all exits and entrances that involved stairs, and a very friendly couple helped me (and a group of fellow travellers from Taiwan) to pick the right S-Bahn to get to Munich airport, as there were currently construction works going on, mangling the usual schedules. (Things like that are wonderfully reinforcing my belief that most of the human beings on this our planet are lovely people who are willing to help, and happy to make the world a little bit better by their actions. Thank you.)

So... everything went smoothly, we landed in Dublin wonderfully on time, I collected my things and went straight to this place:



which is the Convention Centre Dublin. And then I started getting to work, as in getting my stall set up. I had some help from Gillian Polack, who was one of the volunteers in the Dealer's Hall, helping everybody to find their way around and to get set up. (Of course, as always, I had to hand-write a few of the labels. And also of course, as always, I finished set-up the next morning.)

In the end, the table looked like this - at least it did so at one point, things changed slightly in their layout as some stuff was sold out:



Being at a WorldCon is something lovely, and special, and exciting - and for me, being part of it by having a stall in the Dealer's Hall is something extra-special on top of all the "normal" WorldCon excitement and enjoyment. Every show and every fair has their own distinct flavour, so to say, but I think that the WorldCon flavour is far, far different from any of the other fairs that I have done until now. And personally, I find it very, very tasty.

Speaking of tasty - I was totally delighted when I found out my accommodation came with breakfast included, and actually treated me to the possibility of having a Full Irish Breakfast each day, complete with white and black pudding:



That set me up nicely for the day to come - which was good, because between the programme items I was on, the programme items I got to see, and standing at my table meeting so, so many wonderful people (plus looking at their t-shirts and badge ribbons) did not leave much time for eating!

 

This November, I'll be giving a presentation about embroidery at the Nobilitas-Akademie - an event for people doing Living History to meet and learn about a variety of topics.

It will take place in Korbach from November 4 to November 6, with a very varied programme - the presentations range from early towns to social and military aspects of town life to embroidery to local history of Korbach. If that sounds appealing and interesting to you, you can learn more about the Akademie here, and you can also register for it right away on that page.I'll be presenting after dinner on Saturday Friday, so I should probably try and find some extra weird or fun examples of embroidery, to keep everyone from falling asleep in the after-dinner-slump. What a nice excuse to make even more jokes in the presentation than usual! (I like to make jokes in my presentations and papers. One of the best tips I ever got about preparing a presentation, right at the start of my studies, was "Make jokes. An audience that is laughing is not sleeping." That is oh so true - plus everyone enjoys a presentation that makes you laugh, and isn't all bone dry.)

I have told you about the people, the podcasts, my presentation... but not, yet, about the books. As was to be expected, there were a lot of books at LonCon, at various places. There was a library where everybody was invited to take home a book (or as much as you could carry during the last two days). There were plenty of book-seller stalls in the Dealer's Hall, offering everything from used books for small money to signed special editions, wrapped in cellophane. (I did not enquire after their prices. For me, books are there to be read, and while I try to treat them kindly, I do not mind if they look used after a while. That's their point - to be read. At best, again and again and again.) And, of course, a lot of new ones, freshly out.

Such as my friend Gillian Polack's new time travel novel Langue[dot]doc 1305. Obviously, I had to get a copy of that one. A time-travel novel written by a proper historian! And so new it's not even the real book yet, but the uncorrected proof version. Only very few of these were printed, so if you want to give that a read, you should be quick... or have to wait for the final version. Gillian, by the way, has a lovely quirky evil sense of humour, which I know all too well through our endless chat conversations when we work together on our co-writing project. Go buy her book, it will make her happy, and she deserves that. Go buy all her books, while you are at it.

Our two right-hand table neighbours also sold books - Clare Davidson writes YA fiction about hidden races in our world, and you can have a look at what she writes and read excerpts here. Chuck Ian Gordon writes fiction about near-future AIs in MMORPGs, and there are excerpts of the German original and the English translation on his website, too.

I also went to one of the used book stalls and made good use of a ten-pound note and their offer to get a 6th book for free if you buy five. Well... I scored a book by Spider Robinson that is not from his Callahan chronicles (which, if you like puns, is a total must-read). And then I picked things that sounded interesting and that I did not know yet - one book by David Brin, who with "Rivers of Time" now has become one of my favourite authors. The "Exiles Trilogy" by Ben Bova, and that is another author I want to read more of. Plus some others that I have not read yet and that did not ring any bell. Yay surprise books!