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!

Working in historical textile crafts can be a very lonely affair. To help remedy this, we are organising the third European Textile Forum for people working in historical textile crafts. The event will take place September 12-18 2011 in the Urgeschichtemuseum Asparn an der Zaya, Austria.

The programme consists of three parts: Free time to work, try out things and talk about textile techniques; the possibility to give little show-and-tell presentations directly on your project during daylight hours; and a series of short paper sessions in the evening hours. We would like to present current projects, reconstructions, technical problems or research work during those talks.
As focus topic this year, we have decided on linen and other vegetable fibres, a very interesting and we think also very rewarding topic. Fitting in with this focus, Sabine Ringenberg is planning to do a series of test runs for her project of reconstructing historical methods for mordanting linen for a good, reliable dyeing result.

Papers or posters about our focus topic "Linen and other vegetable fibres" are thus especially welcome, but of course we are not limited on these fibres for the Forum.

We want to give up to thirty textile experts and enthusiasts the opportunity to meet at the museum for one whole week, each with his or her project(s), and there is free time to work, chat, demonstrate and talk about textiles and textile crafts during the day. The museum is open to the public and we welcome other weavers, spinners, dyers, to come so they can also sit, work and talk with both guests and participants. With this opportunity for everybody interested in textiles, we want to help establish a better communication between professionals and non-professionals like Living History enthusiasts.

The museum is graciously offering to support the Forum with the opportunity to sleep in a bronze-age house on the museum grounds. The museum facilities are very basic, so staying at the museum means bringing your own sleeping gear (mat and sleeping bag) - think of it like you would think of a camping trip. If you prefer a room, you can of course book your own accommodation in Asparn; information about rooms can be found on the Travel and Accommodation page. Full board consists of breakfast, lunch and dinner; water to drink will be available at all times. Breakfast will be served in the museum, while the other meals will probably be served in the restaurant doing the catering for lunch and dinner, a short walk from the museum. The conference fee, including sleeping space in the bronze age house and full board during the week, is 350 Euro per person.

Asparn an der Zaya is located about 60 km north of Vienna and is served regularly by public transport. We will try to make travel as easy as possible by providing the participants with information on public transport and transport schedules; additional information on the programme, the museum and transportation will be available over the website www.textileforum.org as well. If you have any questions, you can contact us directly via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

For the Forum, we are looking for both paper or poster presentations and offers for show-and-tell presentations. If you can offer a workshop in connection with our Forum focus, please contact us via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Workshops will be booked separately by the participants, and teachers will receive a reimbursement.

To register for the Forum with or without a poster or paper presentation, please submit your current area of research, the title and abstract of your presentation (papers not longer than 20 minutes) until May 27 via the registration form. Please also pass this Call for Papers on to others who might be interested!
For any questions left, you can contact us directly via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

We are looking forward to a wonderful conference with you!

There is a German idiom that goes "Erstens kommt es anders und zweitens als man denkt" (literally: Firstly things will come out differently than secondly you planned), and that was a bit the case with our Textile Forum planning this year. This has lead to - you have already noticed - a bit of a delay with our Call for Papers, which we originally had wanted to post a bit earlier than now.

The good news is that we have finally got a date and a museum to host us - we will have the Textile Forum from 12-18th of September 2011 in the Urgeschichtemuseum Asparn an der Zaya, and I'm currently working on the website and CfP. You can expect the Call to go out tomorrow, and the website to be updated accordingly. And we're very much looking forward to the Forum in 2011!

Here's to let you know about one (more) thing we are working on: Next year's Textile Forum. There's no update on the website yet, but for all of you who have been wondering about whether or not there will be a Textile Forum III: yes, there will be one. And next time, to keep things interesting after going to Eindhoven in the Netherlands and then Schnals in South Tyrol, Italy, we'll go to... England.

There's been a lot of high-quality Living History in Britain for a good long time, and I think the UK was the absolute pioneer of using Living History in museum presentations to make the past more accessible to the visitors. Plus a few of the really widely known books about textile finds come from England, like "Textiles and Clothing", for example. So... we are very happy to be "away from the Continent" for our next Forum!

We'll let you know more through the usual channels once we have figured out the details - through this blog, the Textile Forum website and the Forum newsletter (subscription instructions on the Forum website under "Newsletter"). And can you believe I'm already looking forward to September and the Forum?

I have spent a wonderful, exciting, intense and incredibly exhausting week at the Textile Forum in South Tyrol, and it was more than a little hard to pack up all the things and leave - even though I missed the comforts and quiet of home during that week.

Our landlady, Erna, did her very best to make us all Schnals Valley addicts by cooking the most wondrously delicious meals. The good Hannelore added to that addiction by serving the best Latte Macchiato there is, and all the rest of the museum staff were also totally lovely and incredibly helpful. Saturday evening saw most of us slightly tipsy and in the best of spirits - after a wonderful dinner that the village Unser Frau had invited us to, with typical sheep stew (or cheese, for the vegetarians) and a traditional sweet dish called Schneemilch (snow milk, literally) as dessert - and of course the famous regional wine.


Now that I'm back home, it's also back to work, all the various kinds - spinning, book-keeping, sewing, ordering fabric, all the usual things. But I'm still all buffered by the wonderful memories of the week - spinning with Lena, watching Martin work at the Gunnister Man jacket, Heather spinning with the stroopwafel spindle, just to name a few of the highlights. And oh, did I have a ball!