It's been a wonderful long weekend - and we were really lucky a few times, when we did outdoor activities that were just ended before the rain came.

Rain, mind you, that is still sorely needed by the ground here. It's still too dry overall here, or has been, so it is very welcome water from above.

In other news - I've fixed a date for the online spinning workshop. It will take place on June 2, at 18:00 - and I'm planning to put details into the shop tomorrow, and booking will be possible then as well. The workshop will include a dressed distaff and a spindle, and I'll put in an option for participants who have already bought a distaff and spindle from me, as it makes no sense to have them twice.

This is all very exciting, and I'm already looking forward to it. (And pondering if I can fix the webcam in a way that it's possible to see what I see...)

Here's an update on all the things happening here:

First of all, the blog/comment issue. I may have found the culprit - it seems it has something to do with the blog template. How that could have changed from working without trouble to refusing to show comments, well, I have no inkling of the hint of a clue of an idea... but it means I can start to look into it with something like a bit more of a direction. The quick fix for this might be to install a different template for the time being, but that would look completely different to the rest of the site, and the one I tried this morning for a few minutes was... um... let's just say I found it not aesthetically pleasing or easy to use at all.

Secondly, the online spinning workshop - my plan is to include a spinning kit consisting of a dressed distaff and a spindle with whorl in the price for the workshop, and send these out beforehand. That way, everyone will have the same tools and materials, and we can all start on the same spot. This might not be the best option for courses abroad, but it's certainly something for Germany... and the international shipping option might be the DIY distaff kit, plus fibre, and then my spinners will have to dress the distaff themselves. I'll look into that some more - first course will be in German, and I'll fix a date and put it into the shop in the next few days.

Before that, though, I have to finalise and send off the two pieces I've been writing for two museums - both are materials for internal use, to help with setting up an exhibition or with museum projects. Usually the museum assistance things I write are directly connected to a reconstruction that I'm making for them, so it actually feels a bit weird to hand in "just" a written thing, and no actual goods in connection with them. If all goes well, I'll be finished with one of them before the weekend comes - at least that's my plan. Let's see how well it fares when it has to face reality.

Finally, for you to see you off into the weekend, some garden pictures - because there's also nice things going on there. There's still tulips blooming, among them this fuzzy-edged one:



To my delight, the first of my new tomato plants has started flowering. If the fruits will be ripe as quickly, and taste nicely as well, I might have a new favourite breed...



To my similarly great delight, the little lemon tree has not only grown a good bit this early spring, and bloomed nicely, it is also hard at work making lemons. This is the first one, and the largest to date.



All the care instructions in the 'net, by the way, say that lemon trees like it rather dry and must not be watered too much. I found that at least this one specimen hates getting too dry; it will roll up its leaves, never to unroll them again. So now it lives in a pot with a water reservoir, I make sure the reservoir is never completely empty - and that seems agreeable to the little tree. Which will, hopefully, provide us with lemons now I've found out what it wants.

In German, there's the saying "Alles neu macht der Mai" - May makes everything new. Coincidentally, there's a few new things afoot here...

Thing One: Recycling Spindle Whorls! Medieval spindle whorls came in oh so many shapes, forms, sizes and materials... and one of the types was disc-shaped whorls made from broken pottery. This has been on my list for a while now, but finally I've gotten around to getting the tools and the broken pottery to try making them.



These are cut using modern tools, and the material is modern broken pottery. In the best-case scenario, I'll be able to get some potsherds from replica pots in the future... but for now, I think these will do nicely. They weigh somewhere between 11 and 19 g, depending on which pot they came from, and which part of the pot... and I confess that I'm utterly delighted by those.

They have been tested first thing, of course:



I find them a bit too light for starting off an empty spindle, but then I am fond of using heavy whorls for that. They do run beautifully on a half-filled spindle, though!

I'll be making a few more the next days, and then they will find their way into the shop as well.

Thing Two: I've finally decided to take the plunge and try online teaching. I've done in-person courses only up to now, and I do think it's so, so helpful to be able to touch and feel things and not just see them, but with the pandemic going on and on, I'm starting to think that half the deal is better than nothing. So now I'm planning an online spinning course... I am still trying to figure out a few details, but it will be about 2 hours, showing how to spin with hand-spindle and distaff. My biggest question at the moment is how to make sure that every participant has suitable tools and materials - in my in-person courses, I just bring a bunch of distaffs and a pile of spindle whorls so everyone can pick one to use during the course, and then either buy afterwards or toss them back to me. That is not so easy when teaching over distance, of course. Unfortunately, many modern spindles will have rotational properties that don't work well with the distaff spinning style. So... do I send out kits as part of the course? Or do I just offer them as an option, with the possible danger of someone participating with entirely unsuitable tools?

If you're interested in a spinning course, feel free to drop me an email, or comment here - and once I've figured out the rest of the open questions, you will also be able to find info in the shop in the workshops/courses section.

Botanica Yarnfest this weekend was a lot of fun, and I found out, once again, that I get quite, quite nervous before doing an online livestream demo thingie. It's worse than doing  a real-life demo somehow, even though there are no people present. Probably because there are no people present... there's just no feedback whatsoever, nobody sitting down and waiting for you to start, no room vibes to be read and acted upon. I find I actually prefer having a bunch of people look at me and being able to look back instead of having just that tiny little screen showing myself, so I can make sure I'm not running out of the picture.

Anyway, I did my demo, there were a few questions, I had some fun, and I did get some very nice feedback afterwards. I also managed to download the whole thing to my phone (which did the filming). It was not possible to re-post it to my own Instagram account, though; apparently that is only supported for videos up to 15 minutes, and mine is a bit over 30.

But there's youtube... so here you go, in case you'd like to see it: My demo of medieval spinning, with all the funny "big nose" camera effects that you get when you go close to the camera, and the weird portrait screen ratio helpfully provided by my phone.

The Early Textiles Study Group has opened their Call for Papers for the next conference, which is planned for Manchester on September 9-11. In case in-person is not possible, it will be held virtually.

The title is ‘Legacy: textile studies, the past informing the present’. The ETSG is thus looking for papers that explore any aspect of the legacies of the study of early textiles. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Pioneers in the study and reconstruction of early textiles,
• Collections, their histories and their futures,
• Fresh insights gained by applying new methodologies to old collections and archives.

The CfP is open until June 1st.



Definitely virtually, and taking place this Saturday, is the next EXARC textile chat. As usual, you can find it on their Discord server, and it will start at 15:00 CET. This month, the topic is embroidery.

I've actually managed not to blog about this yet?

The exhibition about experimental archaeology, for which I've also provided some things, has opened: "Experimental Archaeology" at the MAMUZ at Schloß Asparn/Zaya.

It is, of course, currently closed (hellooo lockdown!) but since it runs until November 2021, there should be time to see the exhibition it if you're planning to do so. I've been at the MAMUZ before, and it is definitely a lovely place to visit!

If you're interested in medieval gold threads, there's a zoom talk at/from Yale University on Friday, April 2:

Department of the History of Art, Yale University, Medieval-Renaissance Forum: Gold on the Move. The Mongol Impact on 13th and 14th century Asian and Mediterranean Textiles.

It's at 12:00 pm Yale time, and if I did my time conversion correctly, that corresponds to 18:00 h German time. Which is a very reasonable time to listen to a talk!