I'm still not finished with preparations for the Experiment test run. I have forgotten to ask the lady running the pottery workshop how much the clay will shrink upon drying and firing, so I'll have to make a wild guess at somewhere between 3 and 10 per cent. Then I have some serious doubts about whether some of the spindle whorls will be workable, since trying to reduce weight while keeping the same Moment of Inertia leads to a thin disc of a whorl... made from ceramic. Used for real-life spinning... where a thread can break. And so can the whorl (unless it breaks when firing first).

Ah, science is fun. I can't wait to break the first few whorls on my next day of fumble-spinning. And should those thin and fragile discs really work... I'll make a bunch more for the experiments. And maybe we can substitute the clay for the big-but-thin whorls with some material with the same density of the fired clay - preferably material that is not as fragile as a 3 mm thin disc of ceramic.

After some very hectic and rather stressful weeks, I feel like things are slowly getting under control again. I have managed to meet all the deadlines even with new and unexpected extra deadlines dropping in, so the struggle to get everything done in time was really worth it. Even my little folder/brochure got finished, printed and delivered in time and doesn't look all bad - two of the pictures turned out a little more "technicolor" than I had intended, but I'd say it is still okay. The two important pics and the text have both turned out fine. I'll never, ever work with Quark Xpress, though - I thought I'd do myself a favour and work with a proper layout programme. It did not turn out well. In the end, it was faster making the layout anew in good old CorelDraw, even if that means not as good control over text layout.

Unfortunately, there is no time to lay back and relax - yet. I hope I can get a good writing flash in this week, and I have to finish preparing yet another presentation. And finally write all the emails I didn't get around to write yet.

The weekend will be spent doing things with clay, mostly in service of the Spinning Experiment that will run during the Textilforum, since I need to have a test run first making and then spinning with the whorls we will use for the experiment. Hopefully there will be enough time to do some other ceramic stuff for my own amusement - and maybe a cooking pot or two will come out of the weekend.

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.

Over the holidays, I have finally found the time to pick up my hand spindle and do some spinning.

I like to spin, I just never get around to doing it - there are so many other textile things that beg for my attention or that lie around half-finished. And so my spinning implements lie dormant most of the time. Since there was not much space at the lodgings where we spent the days around New Year, and since I was not up to complicated work anyway, I sat down and spun on the hand spindle. The output of the two hours timed spinning - normal thin thread and thicker thread, for one hour each - is still on the spindle stick, waiting for evaluation. It will be useful for preparation of the spinning experiment, one part of the Textilforum that I am very excited about: An experiment to find out more about the influence of the spindle and the spinner on the thread produced. If that has piqued your curiosity, you find the whole outline for the experiment on the forum pages, here.

The date for the Textilforum is not yet fixed (and thus not up on the website) - we are working on it, though, and hope to have it nailed down and ready for publication by the end of the week. Unfortunately, it is not too easy to find five days where we can have most of a museum and not get a date cross-over with one of the other textile or experimental archaeology events taking place in autumn - so if you have some fingers unoccupied, please keep them crossed for us!

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!