First of all, our apologies to everybody who tried to register for the Textile Forum since the 8th of June - we had a server malfunction that I only discovered yesterday evening. If you have sent or tried to send a registration after the 8th,  please send me an e-mail to katrin(at)textileforum.org, and we will take it from there. To make up for the server problem, we have extended te deadline to the 19th (that's Sunday this week). We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience.

And now some plugging of a conference with a much better webpage - there's a small group in the Czech Republic who are doing a historic-clothes-centered conference on the  19th
November 2011 in Hradec Králové. The programme is mostly in Czech, with two papers announced in English, and the main aim of the group (mostly not scientists from the textile field) is knowledge exchange. (Now doesn't that sound familiar?) I'd love to go, but unfortunately my Czech language skills will barely get me a cup of tea and dumplings after saying "Good day", so I'm afraid I will have to pass.

For those of you interested in joining the seminar, their webpage sports a registration form. And for those of you not interested, but with a minute or two to spare - go there anyway and have a look at the website. You don't need to be able to understand a single word of Czech - just click through the six menu points and enjoy the most beautifully made conference website that I have ever seen.

Today is the last day of the registration period for the Textile Forum in Asparn an der Zaya - if you are planning to attend, please register!

We need the registrations to plan ahead for the Forum, and we still do not have enough participants. We would deeply regret not to have a Textile Forum this year, but at the moment, it does not look good.

Please visit our website www.textileforum.org and have a look if you are interested in working historical textile crafts. We do welcome both professionals and non-professionals, and the last two Forums have been a total blast and a wonderful experience for all participants. We've been offered a Sprang workshop, a dyeing demonstration or workshop, and it is the perfect opportunity to spend a few days working intensively with plant fibres - doesn't that sound tempting?

After the success of the first two years of the European Textile Forum, we did not suspect troubles with participant registration in our third year - but unfortunately, we do have them.

Registration for the Forum on 12th to 18th September 2011 has been very, very slow. In fact, it has been so slow that we have extended the registration period until June 14th - in hopes that some more people will register.

The Textile Forum these last two years has been a rather small event, and while we are content to stay a small thing also during the near-ish future, being small has a downside: It can easily become too small. And this is exactly what is threatening to happen this year. We do need a minimum number of people - to have enough persons in our group so that we can get a good rate on our catering, but also to have enough persons during the Forum itself for the idea of it to work. After all, it's intended for exchange of knowledge and for networking, which will only be possible when enough persons are there.

We do not know why this year is running so slow - is it the topic? Did we not advertise it enough? Is the date, one week later than the last two years, the reason? Or is it just bad luck?

Whatever the reasons, I would be very sorry to see this year's Forum canceled for lack of participants. So if you were planning to register and just didn't get around to doing it in time, please do so. Or if you know somebody who might be interested, please pass on this information - while we will keep hoping until June 14th, and then see whether there will be a Forum this year - or not.

Somehow, the time this year flies like crazy - I just realised that it is almost Ascension Day. There was a bunch of things that I had planned to finish before the long weekend that this induces... but I will probably not manage all of them.

That greenish blackboard is looking a bit less green and more black today, thanks to a bunch of things to do finished since Friday (and thus vanished from the board). On the list for today is packing a bunch of files and sending them off: the article about the spinning experiment results is finished, and I'll give it a last once-over before getting it to its destination.

Associated with this, I am planning to put all the experiment data online so that everybody interested can download the results and do additional research, develop theories, or - in case of the spinners  - see how their spinning looks on a survey card. I have to go over the database for this and make sure that everything is in there that should be in and that nothing is in there that shouldn't, and that will probably need another few days. You will hear about it on this blog, of course.

Spinning experiment work, here I come again!

I'm back home from a wonderful trip to Vienna - and now I'm relaxing a bit from the hustle and bustle of the last few days before I sit down to do a few necessary things.

Vienna has two drawbacks, if you ask me: One, it is much too far away; and two, it is much too big. Well, I don't mind the latter so much unless I have to go from here to there in the car. But driving in Vienna... uh. It's huge, there's lots of traffic, and there are sometimes very creative road layout details that can really surprise an unsuspecting person.

Apart from interesting routes in Vienna and a wonderful workshop with highly motivated participants - that bravely fought their way through brick stitch and couched work - I had lots of coffee, some gorgeous chocolate cake, delightful chats, a heavenly mushroom risotto with garlic bread one evening, and generally lots of fun. Oh, and a little field trip to the museum in Asparn where we'll have the Textile Forum in September. Though I had planned to take a lot of photos there, I sort of did forget while I was on site - but at least I took one picture of the house that will be ours for the Forum week:





And we will be next to this gorgeous reconstruction of a celtic sanctuary:



I'm already looking forward to September - I'm convinced we'll all have a wonderful time in Asparn!

Can you believe there's no bus service from Asparn an der Zaya to Mistelbach on Sundays? Gah. I'd never have guessed that.

Just in case you are wondering why public transport in Austria is high on my list, Asparn is where this year's Textile Forum will take place. And the last day is a Sunday.

At least there's train service from Mistelbach to Vienna. Whew. So now I'll be working on figuring things out... and then updating the page. Life never gets boring!

Oh, and in case you haven't checked out the Forum webpage yet... go do it. Call for Papers/Registration is already running, and we do welcome you whether you come with or without a paper. This year's focus topic is "Linen and other Plant Fibres", but other contributions are of course also welcome.

One of the things I enjoy about being my own boss and doing my own stuff is that I regularly get served with a nice new challenge - something to update, something to change, something to get better next time, something new to add to the stack of goods to sell.

And quite often, those little (or bigger) challenges come with a change to the better. As does the thing I'm facing now... as our Textile Forum gets a bit better known, its ranking on search machines in the 'Net gets higher. And that inevitably leads to more spam.



Last year, I was still sifting out the real entries from the non-real spammy ones by hand, but meanwhile it looks as if there will be a huge lot more spammy entries than last time - so today I have the wonderful opportunity to build an anti-spam trap into the registration questionnaire. So... I'm off to look for an instruction of how to do that!