When I'm at the fairs, it's always fun to explain the simple yet ingenious principle of the oillight to people. A lot of them get just as excited about these little things as I am - especially those with a bit of a green soul and a bit of a love for tea on teapot-warmers, as it's possible to replace tealights with the oillight.

Explaining these things, I quickly learned that most of the visitors are really new to this old concept that's almost forgotten today: place a swimming wick-holder on top of some vegetable oil which in turn floats on some water in a glass of your choice. The wick will burn until the oil is used up (or you extinguish it).

Because the concept has been almost forgotten today, I ended up taking an explanatory video that runs on a little tablet in my booth - to help explain the thing, and show how the lights actually look when in use (safety restrictions keep me from just lighting one - no open fire allowed at any of the fairs).

Now I've finally managed to go over the oillight videos and get them embedded into my shop, and while I was at it, I did a translation of both of them (which for the German fairs were, obviously, subtitled in German). Yay! So you can now watch the show on my Youtube channel, when you are looking at the oillights in the shop... or right here:

One of the things that come up frequently when I do presentations or demonstrations of textile techniques is the value of textiles. We're so used today to going into a clothes shop that sells things for ridiculously low prices that our estimation of textiles and their worth tends to be very low.

The ridiculously low prices are not without their own price, though - only it's usually not us here who are paying it, but cotton farmers, clothing factory workers in Bangladesh, or everyone in the area where cotton is grown when water supplies are used up and the groundwater level plummets (no wonder if up to 20 000 litres of water are used to produce one kilo of cotton), or is poisoned by herbicides and pesticides.

It's not fair, it's not sustainable, and a lot of people have been talking about this "fast fashion" and its problems in the last years. (Just plug "fast fashion problems" into your favourite search engine. You'll be surprised.) There's things we all can do, though - one of them is becoming more aware of what we buy, and how often. Another thing is to try and avoid conventionally grown cotton (organic is much kinder to both producers and the environment) and look for clothes that were not produced in Bangladesh, but more locally. Buy used clothing, mend things that can be mended, and give things you do not wear anymore away instead of tossing them into the bin.

The fact that textiles are such a cheap commodity today has coloured our perception of textile crafts, and our internal valuing of fabrics. This makes it hard for many people to understand why fabrics were so precious in the Middle Ages (and also way past that time, until rather recently). Clothes used to be a very valuable thing, in our past, and I do wonder if they will, one day, be again.

For a change, there's good news from the EU: the seed regulation draft has finally fallen through. (In case you don't know what I am talking about, here's an old article from the Guardian about the regulation.)

Things like this give me hope - if it was possible to get the seed regulation canceled for good, we might still get the same result for TTIP, the weirdness and utter fail that is the Digital Goods VAT,  and other weird ideas that someone cooked up without doing a reality check first.

My tomato seeds have sprouted, by the way. There shall be tomato plants this summer - five different old or old-ish kinds, and three of them grown from seeds that I have harvested myself. I hope this year will be a better one for tomatoes than the last!

I love tea. Especially at this time of year, when it is cold and dreary outside, a nice cuppa makes life so much better, instantly.

I also love to have the tea on a teapot-warmer - for some kinds of tea, especially black tea, this seems to keep the taste nice for a longer time, as opposed to putting the hot tea into a thermos bottle. (At least that's what it feels like for me.)

Teapot-warmers, though, need something to burn within them. Which, usually, means tea lights. Now, these come in handy little packages, each one in their little aluminum shell, and the wax is not the most eco-friendly stuff either. That always scratched on my green conscience.

So from time to time, I'd try different things. Beeswax tea lights. "Eco" tea lights with different wax. They all did not work properly, due to different reasons.

A while ago, though, I discovered an alternative and have now tested it for a bit: oil lights. They are basically a cork swimmer thingie, you insert a short little wick into that, fill something like a small, flat bowl with water, put some vegetable oil on top, place the wicked swimmer on it and light the wick. There you go. Small, lightweight, no aluminum waste, and just a bit of oil that hangs out in the kitchen anyways. Plus, the company that has been making these since 1867 is based here, in my region, and does all the production locally as well.

I would have linked to them here and now, but they do not sell to end-users, and the oil lights seem to be relatively hard to find. Which means... I am actually thinking about getting them into my shop. It has nothing to do with textile production per se, but it is a wonderful product, we all know textile people need hot tea (right?), and it might also be just the thing a few living history folks need. (There were hanging oil lamps in medieval times, which definitely need something to hold a wick. That would be another nice excuse...)

Back in March, I posted about videos with yoga exercises to help relax tense neck and shoulders. I did actually manage to keep doing good things like that for my shoulders - and not only them. These and related videos have resulted in my personal discovery of yoga.

Which has led to the inevitable: a yoga mat.

Yoga mats, essentially, are a non-slip surface with a little cushioning effect thrown in for good measure. Their main job, physically, is to keep hands and feet from slipping (thus making some poses much easier). In addition, they usually provide a bit of insulation against cold and said cushioning effect. The desired amount of non-slip, cushioning and insulation varies depending on the form of practice, the surroundings and personal preferences.

Yoga is not just about the physical, though - it also means going for a certain state of mind, awareness, however you would like to call it, with the practice. And entering any special state of mind tied to any activity is always made easier by using certain rituals - such as putting on special dress, or unrolling a mat - and ritual props tied by association to the procedure and the mind-set. Which is another (though less discussed) function of the yoga mat.

And finally, there is also the eco conundrum thingie - since many of those practicing yoga are inclined to be of the greenish persuasion (at least slightly greenish). And as you might know, I am fitting in right well with that.

There's gazillions of mats out there, from many different companies, manufactured in different places and from a multitude of materials. There is also quite a few these days that label themselves "eco" or "green". Well. To put it very bluntly, and going just for the most environmentally friendly, the best yoga mat? No mat at all. Nothing made, transported, and sold. No materials and no energy used. Second best is something serving as a mat that does not fuel the industry and incite them to make more mats (because they are obviously getting bought). That could be a rug or other substitute, or an old mat that is not used by its original owner anymore. (Not buying a new mat if the old one still serves, but continuing to use the old one, would also fall into that category.)

Buying a new mat, even if made from natural materials and produced (and transported) in the most environmentally-friendly way possible, preferably also with fair prices and wages paid for every one and every thing involved in the whole production process? That is third-best. At best. Because every thing that is produced... has an impact.

(Now is the point where I could ramble on about the "no-impact" and "no harm" thingie. There is no such thing as no impact, we each of us live and breathe and that alone makes a difference and an impact on the world. Not regarding that we eat, too.)

You can do worse by the environment, however: There's enough choices out there that use PVC or processes involving toxins, made in factories with not very good conditions. Those are usually cheap mats - which is not saying that pricier is always better in that respect.

I did, by the way, buy a new mat. One of those labelled "eco". Which smells, strongly, of rubber (dissipating only very slowly - it smells less than at the beginning now, though); which is very nicely non-slip, a pleasing colour, and gives me the feeling that I did something to treat myself to a little luxury...

First of all, the good news: The 14C-Dating of the Ribe mitten is fully financed, and the initiator is, accordingly, quite happy. Thanks to all of you who helped funding! If you have not helped funding yet and are sort of sad that the others did it without you: You can still pitch in, any extra money will be used for additional analysis of the piece. Ideas on further research are including the stitch type used, wool analysis, and yarn analysis. For the previously blogged English instructions on how to fund on the Danish site, click here.

The petition against the full cut of heritage conservation funding in one of Germany's federal states has led to some political discussion... but with no clear statements yet. You can read a short piece about that on Archaeologik (in German). The petition still lacks about 1.400 signatures to reach its goal, so if you have not signed yet, please do so and spread the word, there are still 30 days left to go. The text on the petition site itself is in German. If you need to get up to date on what it's about first, you can read my blogpost about it or go to the DGUF who initiated it; they have an English translation on their webpage.

And a last one - I have posted a link to the petition against food patenting before, but it seems as if there's more in the works: an EU law to make almost all traffic of non-industrially produced seeds illegal. When I first read about that, I thought it was a belated April Fool joke, but no, it looks like they really mean it. I found a link to the draft proposal here, and I'll keep my eyes open for protests against this. If you know more, please share in the comments!

There's quite a backlog of things-of-interest that has accumulated, both in my browser tabs and in my email inbox. And I am going to start blogging them... tomorrow.

Because today I have to post this:



If you enjoy a) organic food, b) good and funny movies, c) Star Wars parodies, d) parodies of all kind, or - the best - a jumble of that all... make sure you watch it.

And tomorrow... interesting and really usefull stuff.