Tannenberg is the traditional end of season for me, and is one of the two markets that split the year into the summer and the winter half.

In contrast to all the other years, though, when Tannenberg always meant that you would put on all your really warm clothes and swish them through the very red, very deep and very cold mud, there was not a single drop of rain this year. It was beautiful and sunny and really hot during the day (and not very cold during the night) and felt more like mid-September than start of October. There was even one guy who needed medical attention because he had a sunstroke.

And not only the weather was nice - I had a wonderful time with friends, sitting around the fire and chatting, hanging out and singing and listening to songs, eating delicious food, making fire with flint and steel (I just love that) and meeting lots of old friends and acquaintances again.

I also did the test run for giving small workshops on a market, and I will do this at least once or twice more before I finally decide on a yes or no. Interest was there, and many people told me that they might come, but actual turnup rate of people was not so high. That may be due to too good weather and too much else to do or due to a bad choice of workshop times from my side (at 3 o'clock in the afternoon), but the idea at least was very well received.

And now it's time to take care of all the things left to do here - file the quarter-yearly tax stuff, finish the English online shop thingie, read all the mails that arrived while I was gone, and prepare for the next things on my calendar. And since it's the winter half of the year now, it's also time to take out all the items of the gear over the next weeks, check and clean them, repair them if necessary and pack them away for their next use when the season starts again - accompanied by drinking large amounts of tea and sensible amounts of chocolate.

I can be found at Tannenberg this weekend - we will be going there and setting up today, and stay for the full long weekend.

I can be found on the meadow where I will have my little stall with nice goods for sale - plus a very special new something: a wool preparation station, where you can learn how to process wool with combs or cards and use my tools for that. I am also thinking about offering mini-workshops to learn (or improve) historical handspinning techniques, announced via a blackboard at my stall.

If you are in the area, I hope you will drop by!

I'm back from having a brilliant time in Mainz at the RGZM - wonderful weather (we all hung out in T-Shirts), delicious food, delightful colleagues, and plenty of time to chat and demonstrate things to colleagues and visitors alike.

Speaking of delicious food - a colleague of mine is giving a one-day course in medieval cookery on October 15 in Bad Windsheim. You can read more about the course on his blog, where you will also find instructions on how to sign up.

And now it's time for me to relax a little and sort my things, since we are leaving for the next event on Thursday already.

If you are looking to meet me for a chat (or because you are desperate to buy me a coffee), I can be found at the following places in the near future:

Tannenberg, the traditional end-of-season market, September 30 to October 3. I will be having a stall there and sell my usual stock of goods - plus if you would like to try prepping wool for historical spinning yourself, I will offer you the opportunity to "rent-a-wool-tool" at my stall.

Family day at the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz, September 25 - I will be demonstrating wool processing and spinning with distaff and hand-spindle. If you dare, you can try spinning yourself as well!

The Embroidery Workshop - I will be teaching medieval embroidery in Erlangen on the 29th of October (counted work) and the 30th of October (split stitch and diverse laid-and-couched techniques). Booking can be done via the webshop (look under "Kurse").

Medieval Dress and Textiles Society Autumn meeting, October 22, in London - I will be speaking in the afternoon there.

If you are in the area, why not drop by?

I spent Saturday and Sunday in Stuttgart at the "Medieval Times" event of the Junges Schloß Stuttgart. "Junges Schloß" is a museum concept especially for children - every object in easy view of children, things to touch, experience, try yourself and garments to dress up with. I had the opportunity for a quick walk through the exhibition on Sunday morning, and I was so bummed that I'm already older than ten years.

No, really. It is a wonderful museum for children (and me and the two grown-up colleagues also had a heap of fun sitting on the thrones and on the knight's horse), and if you are in the area with a child, or if you are interested in museum concepts for children, or if you are plain curious - do go there. I was really blown away by the exhibition.

If you are too far away (or if you want a look before), here's a picture of the main room, a renaissance "cabinet of curiosities" showing treasures from throughout time.


(Picture from a photostream made by the museum that you can find here.)

And those glass cases can all be opened by the staff in the museum so that the young visitors can touch the original objects in there. Awesome, isn't it?

I had hoped to sneak off and catch another few minutes in the exhibition room, but the medieval event was so well received and so well visited that there was absolutely no time for it. I spent all Saturday and Sunday spinning, explaining about worsted and woolen, combing wool and spinning even more. And letting people try themselves. Oh, and threatening my neighbour with my distaff, because that's a very medieval thing to do (and always good for a laugh).

So go visit the museum, everybody who is able - I'm sure you will enjoy it!

... and I'm sorry for the blog silence yesterday; I had pre-written a note to tell you that I'm still on the trip home from Freienfels, but I seem to have missed hitting the "publish" button, so it did not go up.

Freienfels, while I'm at it, was very nice - we were situated nicely close to things, but still in a quiet side lane on the lower meadow, with nice neighbours and not very far to go to the loo container. (That is really an interesting fact if you have to make a dash to pee in a cold night!) Also, my husband came to accompany me, and that always means I get what I jokingly call "Freigang" - furlough to make a round over the market and hug hello to all the friends and colleagues.

In addition to the old friends, it was also a market with a few firsts: First time with a new brazier/fire bowl, first time on the lower meadow with the stall, first market with the full embroidery assortment, first time with a coffee pot in addition to the teapot we always take.

Most of the German markets require, as per their regulations, use of a brazier or fire-bowl to make fire. Fire pits - a very common thing a few years ago - are not allowed anymore. Most of the groups thus carry a small or large metal fire container, often round and with three longish legs to keep it well away from the soil and grass. We had an old slightly modified cast-iron barbecue, but were never using it very much. This spring, the most pationt of husbands stumbled across a ceramic fire bowl offered in an online shop, and we did buy it. Fire bowls or other fire containers are, I'm very sure, not what a medieval traveller would have lugged around, but ceramics are at least a more historically plausible use of materials for a fire bowl than metal. The bowl does not suck all the heat from a small fire, extinguishing it; it's not too heavy, and it does look nice. We are thus very content with how the first market with the bowl went.

Also concerning fire on markets, I'm very proud that after nursing my learning curve for a few years, in bits here and there, and most of the learning done by trial and error, I am now at a point where it is totally normal and no extra trouble at all to light a fire with steel, stone, and tinder. I have the method to build the fire pre-lighting down pat, and when there's wind, it is making fire the Zen way: just wait and watch, it will all burst into flames after a while. Fire-making has been made much nicer and easier by the addition of a wax-cloth bag holding straw (for the nest to put the tinder in) and small, thin slivers of dry wood (for building the fire). The bag goes into the basket that holds the firewood as well as a small axe, a folding saw (blatantly modern, so it gets hidden in the wood) and a pair of gloves to handle hot things. The rest of the kit for fire-making - a cloth bag holding tinderbox, steel and flint and a well-waxed wooden box with fine wood shavings - goes into one of the small chests that we have, the one that is holding my tableware and food-related stuff.

It feels like a good, solidly reliable arrangement now, and thus might last for a few years. And it was really, really satisfying to just start a fire, just so. And I'm already looking forward to the next time!

I'm busy as a bee this morning, with all the usual last-minute packing and sorting for a workshop to be done. The printer is churning out my workshop papers right now, there's a goodly sized heap of stuff sitting here waiting to be carried into the car, and I'm all but chomping at the bit to go. And really, really looking forward to getting people to play with gold thread, plant-dyed silks and the best quality linen I've seen in ages. Good materials - good feeling while working.

Since I'll be far from here (why can't Vienna be closer to home?) and will be there some days - a meeting for Textileforum is planned for Monday - there will be no blogging until Wednesday next week. However, if you're in Vienna or close to there, you can stop by on Sunday evening, when there's a little "bazar" starting at about 18:00 in the Tympanum (Eulenspiel) in Prinz-Eugen-Str. 6 in Vienna. You will be able to shop in the book assortment that Gregor from buchportal.at is bringing, as well as browse my collection of odds and ends connected to historical textile techniques.