If you're a regular reader of this blog, you will know that I a) do own a car (or, to be really correct, I own my own company, and said company owns a car, and that b) I am very fond of cycling, and will try to use the bike or public transport instead of driving whenever possible.

Car vs. Bike is, to my constant consternation, a very emotionally heated debate here in Germany. I really don't understand this - and I guess quite a lot of it is due to some anti-green propaganda. But let me explain this a bit better.

It's quite typical that, if somebody says "people could take the bike to do that" or "bikes are more sustainable than cars", someone else cries out "but you cannot forbid people to use the car, not everyone can be car-free" or "but bikes are not suitable to transport heavy goods or multiple people". Basically, what happens is the implication that everyone who is pro-bicycle, or mentions benefits from bikes wants everyone to instantly ditch their car and go by bike everywhere and for everything, no matter what.

This is definitely not true, but it happens all the time, and it's not making the situation better.

I grew up in a small town at the end of nowhere, and everybody there used the car for about everything. Children rode bikes, but as soon as you turned 17, you'd register for driving school, and you'd typically get your license on your 18th birthday (the earliest point possible back then), and then you had mobility, and freedom, and many of my peers also had their first own car then, or got use of the family car. My home town is not very bike-friendly regarding the streets, and it's a bit hilly, but both things are also not very bad, so it would be perfectly possible to cycle more than is usual there. On the other hand, there used to be next to no public transport (which has not changed much) - so for any visits to neighbouring villages or towns, you'd need a car.

Today, I live in a bike-friendly city, and we're doing all of our everyday stuff by bike. There's also decent public transport, which allows to take bikes along in the metro trains so you can use your own transport for the last mile. However, there's still the car - and I need that for going to fairs and markets, because there's just no way that I could transport all the things necessary to set up a booth in public transport. Exceptions apply, such as when I went to Dublin for WorldCon - though I had most of the booth logistics supplied by the con there. If you have to bring your own tables and seats like for most fairs, that's just straight out not possible.

So. I am fully aware of the benefits of a car - but I'm also aware of their drawbacks. Personally, I think that bikes are the best thing for mobility in many cases, and many circumstances. They are resource-friendly (and even an e-bike uses much less material and energy than a car), they keep you healthy, they are quiet and don't take up much space, it's easy to find a parking space for them just where you want to go, and for short to medium distances in daily life, especially in towns, they are faster than a car. Even for the 10-something kilometers to our regular bouldering place, it takes us just as long to go by car as it does by bike! Yes, they have limited transport capacity (though it's amazing what you can pack on if you have a bit of practise), and they do not protect you from the weather (unless you have a velomobile), but these are things where there's still the option to take a car. (Or lend a cargo bike.)

Nobody of the sane people promoting the bike as a very good option for personal transport wants everyone to stop using cars right now. All that we want is for more people to consider cycling (or walking) instead of hopping into the car more often, because every little bit helps. So it makes me very sad when the response to "more cycling" is an automatic "bikes cannot solve everything!!!!11!!". No, they cannot, but neither can cars.

And then there's e-bike bashing, too. Yes, they take more resources to make than a non-electrified bike. There's also the people looking down their noses at e-bikers, because apparently, in their minds, if you need the motor, you are a lesser person. WTF? If an e-bike means there will be more cycling instead of car driving, I'm all, all for it. I don't care for the reason that someone adds a motor to a bike, whether it's laziness or unfitness or some other physical condition or the fact that it's just more fun to go supported or the need to get somewhere reliably quickly without breaking a sweat or the desire to ride on the latest fad wave or the fact that the friends in the cycling group all have an e-bike and there's no way to keep up without one - any reason is valid. And any kilometer done by bike, whether e or not, whether it's to replace a car trip or it's a fun ride just for cycling's sake, is a good thing.

I'm done with my rant for now... but I'm curious: Have you encountered that "you want to forbid everything! go away"-phenomenon, too? Regarding cycles, or something that a green party said or promoted, where you are? And what's your opinion on the bike-vs-car thing? Let me know in the comments...

If you're watching the news, you have probably seen images from the regions of Germany currently being flooded. It's really, really bad - I am very lucky, living in an area that has not had such heavy rains. Our house is not especially flood-prone either, it's on a little hillock, sort of.

In those other areas, though... oh my goodness. Houses have been destroyed, and there's been a good number of deaths as well, plus there's missing persons, and issues with drinking water supplies - plus, of course, issues with electricity and gas supply. Some areas are cut off by floods.

Like one newspaper wrote, it's a shock, but it does not come entirely as a surprise. We've had changes in weather over the last years, with winters getting warmer and summers getting unpredictably hot, or wet. Climate scientists have warned for years that things like this will happen, and will happen more frequently.

What I really, really find shocking (though, unfortunately, also not surprising) is that one of the candidates for becoming chancellor in September actually said that, "well, because of this one single day, you do not change politics". That was when he was asked if he really thinks brown coal mining should not be stopped sooner than planned, in the light of the obvious consequences of climate change...

What? WHAT? Well, if that single day does not make you think, what will? By the way, that guy is the same person who said that "we have to act sooner, and do more, to counter climate change". Erm. Your party is the one who has been at the rudder these last 16 years, and it's also the one that has blocked many, many ventures to become carbon-neutral and more climate-friendly faster.

We have no children, and honestly, in times like these? I'm really, really glad we made that decision. For all those that did have children, though... I very much hope that a lot of people see that we need a change in the ruling party, and we need it now, and towards one that will take our situation seriously and actually do things to slow down the climate catastrophe.

It's time again for the monthly textile chat on the EXARC discord server - this time, the topic is "Show and Tell". So if you are interested in seeing what the people there have been up to, or have something historical-textile-related yourself that you'd like to show and discuss, join the fun on Saturday, 15:00 Amsterdam time. (Which is also Berlin time. I always triple-check those times, as I'm always afraid that I will muddle up something and appear an hour early (not so bad) or an hour late (not so good)...

More about the event, and the link to the discord server, here.

It's time again - for tick season! I just took care of one crawling on my foot after being in the garden for a short spell, and the cat has had a few already.

So here's your yearly reminder: If you are living in, or planning to travel to, a tick-infested region, go check if your vaccination against tick-borne meningoencephalitis is still up to date, and get it refreshed if it isn't.

Typical recommendations to avoid tick bites are to wear long trousers when outside in taller grasses or the forest, and check your body afterwards for any unwanted, unpaying temporary eight-legged appendages. Remove them with tweezers, or a special removal tool. We've tried a number of different tools over the years, and the best we've found is a tick removal lasso. Ours are from a Swedish company and called 3iX; they work much better than normal tweezers or even the special tick-removal tweezers. Sometimes you also find cards with slits sold as tick removal tools; I never got those to work on human skin, much less on cats with all the fur in the way. The lasso tool (Zeckenschlinge, for the German speakers here) does an equally good job on humans and animals, and works for all sizes of ticks, even the really tiny ones.

If you want to make sure the tick goes dead, you will need to squash it, cut it apart, pour boiling water over it, or burn it. It will happily survive being washed down the drain. (I wrote more about that here.)

I hope you'll have a good season with no tick bites!

It's Friday (hooray!) and I'm very much looking forward to this weekend. Not only because hey, weekend! but also because there are exciting things happening.

Thing One: Flights of Foundry con has started, and I'll hang out in the Dealer's room on Discord... plus I will do a spinning-with-handspindle demonstration on Sunday, 13:00 German time. Registration is still possible, as far as I can tell, and it's free, so come and drop by!

Thing Two: The livestream with Q&A about the Lengberg garments that I've posted about yesterday. This will take place on Saturday (tomorrow!) at 20:00 German time.

Thing Three: Sunday is the International World Heritage Day in Austria, and the Natural History Museum Vienna has prepared a programme together with a few of its research partners. There will be things to see about the salt mines in Hallstatt and the work being done there. Yes, THE Hallstatt of the glorious bronze and iron age textile finds. Find out more about the event (in German) on the NHM site, or go here to find the livestream from Hallstatt, on April 18, from 13:30 German time onward. Or go here to watch Pfahlbau TV on Sunday, starting at 13:00 German time.

Whatever you do, I hope you'll have a gloriously fine and fun weekend!

Just in case you're shaking your head at the pandemics politics in your own country (provided it's not Germany), rest assured that things here are managed just as stupidly as you could imagine.

We'll have a "lockdown" during Easter, where all shops are closed except those selling food, and those are closed as well, only wait, we can't have people be without food-shopping possibilities for five days consecutively so they will open on Saturday. Because those five days will help so much, yeah. They would have helped plenty back in November, when the second wave was getting ready to pick up speed. They would have helped at the start of March, when it was apparent that our numbers were not sinking anymore, but stagnating. But no, there had to be openings back then. Now it's too late for those five days to make an impact, as experience tells us.

There are restrictions regarding whom you can meet (one other household, maximum of five persons) and you are not allowed to stay somewhere else in your own caravan, but it's perfectly allowed to fly to Mallorca and have a vacation there, and there's no testing required by law before or afterwards, only the airlines are supposed to be testing their customers, but at least one has already declared that they won't.

And after Easter, there may be discussions about opening things up again, and there will be more safety because there will be vaccinations and more quick-tests. Um, wasn't that EXACTLY what you declared would make the last loosening of restrictions totally safe and sound? There's still no consistent strategy for this, and there's obviously really steeply rising numbers, so tell me again how this is going to work any better in two weeks, with higher incidence numbers than two or three weeks ago?

All of this, mind you, is also only theoretical, because as the actual handling of things is down to the individual federal states, they will all do their own thing again. We will have 16 different sets of rules, at least, and then again differences in how the counties handle things. Because, as all our politicians will readily tell you, we really need a straight, simple set of rules and guidelines that everyone in all of Germany adheres to. Except where their own region warrants an exception, obviously.

I'm really, really fed up with our politicians right now. They have learned exactly nothing, nothing at all. At the start of all of this pandemic, nobody knew anything - so yes, making mistakes is somehow understandable. But then nothing to prepare for the second wave was done during the summer, and that, consequently, was managed very badly. But to have learned exactly and utterly nothing again yet from the second wave for the third? That is inexcusable. Not that there weren't warnings from the doctors and hospitals and epidemologists.

Stupid, stupid politicians. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it... and even if there's an excuse for not knowing and consequently not learning from real history, as in several hundreds of years ago... it should be possible to remember what happened a few months before. But then, we're talking about politicians here, who probably can forget everything and anything in the blink of an eye if it suits them.

One of the things I've learned running my own business: Nobody Tells You Things.

I always thought that information about things changing that would affect a shop or business would be coming to said shops and businesses. Say, for instance, that there's a change in VAT rate - the tax you have to charge for every sale.

If you have a business in Germany, you're listed and registered. At the very least, your home town has your registration as a business. You might also be registered in some other institutions or thingummies, but let's leave that aside - one registration, which is in your town and thus an official state registration, that's enough.

So in theory, since you are registered and the state should sort of have an interest in having you comply with rules and regulations... I'd have expected some letter or email or notice about that change in VAT rules to come to each business. Not necessarily a long explanation or precise instructions, mind. Just something like a heads-up, as in "there'll be a change, please check if that applies to your business and inform yourself".

Just in case you're also in the Fluffy Bunny Wonderland of Imagination and Incredible Optimism, like I was about this once upon a time, let me burst your bubble: This is not so. Nobody official from the town, or from the state, or from the EU, or from any other stately place, ever tells you anything about upcoming rules or changes. Ever. EVER. You have to miraculously find out about things yourself... or fail to do so, and then maybe eventually fail to comply with rules. The most you can hope for then is an admonishment if your failure to comply comes out somehow, and maybe you'll have to pay a fine then, too.

The long-time readers of you will remember the issue with VAT-MOSS (or VAT-MESS) some 5 years back, when VAT rules for digital goods sales across borders were changed, and caught a lot of vendors unaware. Back then, already, it was hinted that similar rules should be introduced for physical goods as well. This is now going to happen; it was planned to start in January 2021, but has been postponed to July because of the pandemic. I accidentally learned about that this morning... which meant I spent half the morning reading up on stuff to find out what I'll have to do come July.

The good news is: looks like I'll have to do exactly... nothing. My business, and thus my export volume, is small enough to fall under the annual export threshold, which, thank goodness, has been set into place right from the start (as opposed to when the digital sales VAT changed). As a side effect, I've also found out that a similar threshold has been put into place for sales of digital goods, which is fantastic as I'll be able to sell digital instructions and knitting patterns from my shop again. (That threshold introduction happened at sometime back between 2015 and now, and I totally missed it.)

So. Phew. A burst of adrenaline, and then good news - that's an okay outcome of this. And I confess, should you now all conspire to order so many things outside of Germany but within the EU to lift me over the threshold, I'd be totally cool to register for the One-Stop-Shop for my taxes and do the fancy changes to the shop system that would be necessary. (If you want to know, it would mean to look up the tax rates for each of the 27 member states and what they apply to, as books and other printed goods are sometimes taxed with a reduced rate and sometimes not at all, then enter those taxes in the shop system accordingly for each country. Then test all that to make sure it functions properly. That is probably a workday, if it's going badly, more.)

After this little intermezzo... I can now tackle my overly long list of things again. Hooray!