Here's an update on all the things happening here:

First of all, the blog/comment issue. I may have found the culprit - it seems it has something to do with the blog template. How that could have changed from working without trouble to refusing to show comments, well, I have no inkling of the hint of a clue of an idea... but it means I can start to look into it with something like a bit more of a direction. The quick fix for this might be to install a different template for the time being, but that would look completely different to the rest of the site, and the one I tried this morning for a few minutes was... um... let's just say I found it not aesthetically pleasing or easy to use at all.

Secondly, the online spinning workshop - my plan is to include a spinning kit consisting of a dressed distaff and a spindle with whorl in the price for the workshop, and send these out beforehand. That way, everyone will have the same tools and materials, and we can all start on the same spot. This might not be the best option for courses abroad, but it's certainly something for Germany... and the international shipping option might be the DIY distaff kit, plus fibre, and then my spinners will have to dress the distaff themselves. I'll look into that some more - first course will be in German, and I'll fix a date and put it into the shop in the next few days.

Before that, though, I have to finalise and send off the two pieces I've been writing for two museums - both are materials for internal use, to help with setting up an exhibition or with museum projects. Usually the museum assistance things I write are directly connected to a reconstruction that I'm making for them, so it actually feels a bit weird to hand in "just" a written thing, and no actual goods in connection with them. If all goes well, I'll be finished with one of them before the weekend comes - at least that's my plan. Let's see how well it fares when it has to face reality.

Finally, for you to see you off into the weekend, some garden pictures - because there's also nice things going on there. There's still tulips blooming, among them this fuzzy-edged one:



To my delight, the first of my new tomato plants has started flowering. If the fruits will be ripe as quickly, and taste nicely as well, I might have a new favourite breed...



To my similarly great delight, the little lemon tree has not only grown a good bit this early spring, and bloomed nicely, it is also hard at work making lemons. This is the first one, and the largest to date.



All the care instructions in the 'net, by the way, say that lemon trees like it rather dry and must not be watered too much. I found that at least this one specimen hates getting too dry; it will roll up its leaves, never to unroll them again. So now it lives in a pot with a water reservoir, I make sure the reservoir is never completely empty - and that seems agreeable to the little tree. Which will, hopefully, provide us with lemons now I've found out what it wants.

In German, there's the saying "Alles neu macht der Mai" - May makes everything new. Coincidentally, there's a few new things afoot here...

Thing One: Recycling Spindle Whorls! Medieval spindle whorls came in oh so many shapes, forms, sizes and materials... and one of the types was disc-shaped whorls made from broken pottery. This has been on my list for a while now, but finally I've gotten around to getting the tools and the broken pottery to try making them.



These are cut using modern tools, and the material is modern broken pottery. In the best-case scenario, I'll be able to get some potsherds from replica pots in the future... but for now, I think these will do nicely. They weigh somewhere between 11 and 19 g, depending on which pot they came from, and which part of the pot... and I confess that I'm utterly delighted by those.

They have been tested first thing, of course:



I find them a bit too light for starting off an empty spindle, but then I am fond of using heavy whorls for that. They do run beautifully on a half-filled spindle, though!

I'll be making a few more the next days, and then they will find their way into the shop as well.

Thing Two: I've finally decided to take the plunge and try online teaching. I've done in-person courses only up to now, and I do think it's so, so helpful to be able to touch and feel things and not just see them, but with the pandemic going on and on, I'm starting to think that half the deal is better than nothing. So now I'm planning an online spinning course... I am still trying to figure out a few details, but it will be about 2 hours, showing how to spin with hand-spindle and distaff. My biggest question at the moment is how to make sure that every participant has suitable tools and materials - in my in-person courses, I just bring a bunch of distaffs and a pile of spindle whorls so everyone can pick one to use during the course, and then either buy afterwards or toss them back to me. That is not so easy when teaching over distance, of course. Unfortunately, many modern spindles will have rotational properties that don't work well with the distaff spinning style. So... do I send out kits as part of the course? Or do I just offer them as an option, with the possible danger of someone participating with entirely unsuitable tools?

If you're interested in a spinning course, feel free to drop me an email, or comment here - and once I've figured out the rest of the open questions, you will also be able to find info in the shop in the workshops/courses section.

Sometimes, things turn out to be more difficult than anyone would have guessed. One of these things, as I've learned, is... getting a room.

Not a room at a hotel, or youth hostel, or such things; I'm perfectly capable of that, and it is generally not a problem at all (unless you wait until the last minute and then try to get something cheap in a town where there's a fair going on...). I was looking for a room to give workshops. To be even more precise, to give a tablet weaving workshop.

A while ago, when I was preparing for the weaving weekend in Belgium, I had figured out a good plan on how to place tables, chairs, and weaving warps so that the room available could fit the participants we'd planned for. I have since tweaked this a tiny bit, and I can comfortably fit twelve weavers using six tables. (And clamps, of course. I think there's no workshop where I don't turn up with my clamps.)

[caption id="attachment_4902" align="alignnone" width="979"] Table, clamp, band. I love this setup - it's quick, easy, versatile, and allows to have a wide choice on how to sit at the band.


For this constellation, I need a room size of no less than 6 by 9 metres, though - and it turned out that such a room for renting is very, very hard to find. Lots of people that I have talked to have expressed their wonder at this, and frankly, I would have thought it should be no problem either - before I started searching in earnest. Either there is such a room, but it is booked already, or the owners (especially churches) need it for themselves on Sunday, or it is not rented out over weekends, or it is completely unaffordable for me. I've managed to rent one room once, for my last workshop, but alas - this place is one of the "usually booked already" places.

Which means that, after searching for more than a month now, I was quite frustrated. So much that yesterday evening, I looked at our living room again... with a sharp eye, and a measuring tape, and the help of the Most Patient Husband of Them All (who really, absolutely, and utterly deserves this title - as my giving a full weekend workshop at home also means that our main living space is taken up).

There was then some drawing of available space, and some cutting of folding table mockups, and more measuring and thinking - and finally we came up with a method to fit up to eight weavers. Which is very good - and which means that I can finally, finally set the date for my next tablet weaving course, which will be a beginner's workshop. (It will be on March 7 and 8, by the way... description for the shop and booking possibility will come up tomorrow at the latest.)

I've spent this weekend teaching weaving to six wonderfully enthusiastic people - and I can tell you that while everyone enjoyed it (as I was told so) - I think nobody had more fun that I did.

Tablet weaving is one of my favourite teaching topics. It's simultaneously easy and brain-bending. There's simple rules to follow, and within those rules, you are completely free to do as you wish. Mistakes are easy to make, but they are also easy to spot, and after a while you make less and less of them. And for teaching purposes, with the system that I have developed for weaving both "normal" patterns and twill patterns, it's even not relevant whether someone has been doing tablet weaving before or not.

So everyone gets the basic explanations, then we get to work making a warp, and then weaving starts. Which, about inevitably, results in a room full of very quiet, very concentrated people, exploring the structures and possibilities of tablet-woven bands, conjuring up patterns. It actually was so quiet that I could hear a pin drop. (Yes, I actually tried. It was only just audible, but that was because the floor in the room was relatively soft, so the pin made very, very little noise.)

In my course description, I purposely did not promise that we'd get into twill, as this can be hard to gauge. While a weekend course is usually enough to at least touch the basics (the plain background, and the principle of how to weave a motif in that), I can't guarantee that more will be covered, as this very much depends on the individual group. In some groups, the weavers want more time to explore diagonals patterns, for instance, and that, of course, is a wonderful thing as well.

This weekend, however, everybody was keen on getting some twill shenanigans done, and so we did. I can tell you that for me as the teacher, seeing that first line in everyone's band move first there, then here - that is the most exciting simple line that I know. Also, it means that I get to tell one of my favourite teaching stories: The one about the little renegade tablet that wants to start a revolution.

That is another thing teaching in this style has taught me - if you work paperless, without drafts, stories and mnemonic aids are wonderful tools to help explain things, and to help remember them. I don't know how pattern instructions were passed on in medieval societies, but I could well imagine a teacher tell a story to the pupils to help them remember what needs to be done at a given place in a pattern. It would probably not have been the story about a little tablet being a revolutionary and turning everything around (which is something that would not have latched onto basic cultural knowledge and background as it does with today's people), but it might have been something else fulfilling the same purpose. Songs and stories make wonderful tools for keeping things in minds, and I thoroughly enjoy teaching with stories. And daring little revolutionary tablets that prepare their revolution in the underground, quietly, looking like every other tablet for a while... until, suddenly...

You might remember that I went to Belgium in January, to teach tablet weaving at the beautiful Merveille de Méry? This summer, there will be another workshop there. It's a relatively modern form of embroidery, but since Tambour embroidery has tickled my interest for a few years now, I'm a little sad that it's on a date where I will not be able to join in. (Since the reason for that is that I'll be in Dublin on the WorldCon on that weekend, behind my table in the dealer's hall, my sadness is not too bad, though.)

However, that should not keep you from considering a weekend's worth of lessons in Tambour embroidery (unless, of course, you consider coming to Dublin as well). So here's the info about the workshop, together with the contact information for booking:

Whatever you do on that weekend in August - I hope you will have fun!

A while ago, I marked out two weekends for giving workshops... and then it took me a while to decide on what topics to offer. In the end, I had decided on making one of the weekends a two-day tablet-weaving workshop. And that's where it got complicated.

For table-weaving, you need to tension your warp. Obvious, right? Well, for several people to have a nice setup where they can work with a nicely tensioned warp in appropriate length at an appropriate height, this very quickly means you need a system for the setup. Especially as every warp should be accessible without crawling on the floor to pass under other people's warps, or hopping over them (which would be an admirable feat, by the way). After all, the weavers might want to get up and stretch once in a while, or have something to drink, or go to the toilet, or whatever.

(Fun fact: I might actually do a bit of crawling underneath things in such a workshop, even though it would not be necessary - but it would mean a longer way to walk. So.)

In consequence, this means I need a room that is large enough to accommodate my setup of several tables and chairs, which will then accommodate up to a dozen weavers. And finding a room that is close enough to my home base, affordable, and available on the weekend in question - well, that has turned out to be a challenge greater than expected.

But finally, I have found a room for the tablet-weaving course. So there will be a weaving weekend in Erlangen on August 31 and September 1, teaching a deep understanding of tablet-weaving and a system that will allow you to freestyle patterns. No pattern draft necessary. (If you're interested, there is an Early Bird discount of 25 € with the code DerFrueheVogel - valid until May 31.)

With that course and weekend all settled, the two others were easier: I will be offering a filet netting workshop on June 22, and a "freestyle workshop" on June 23. The freestyle workshop is 3 to 4 people, we will chat beforehand on what you are interested in, and then everyone gets to work on their own project or issues - and can sneak peeks into the other participants' projects as well.

So if you're interested... check out the workshop links, and maybe I'll see you in a month or three!

I'm on the hunt - on the hunt for suitable rooms for giving workshops, for all those lovely topics where my home is not large enough - such as tablet-weaving with more than two people.
Since tablet-weaving workshops have been requested again and again, and I'm also really psyched about giving them (as teaching tablet-weaving is utter fun, for me), I need a room for that... with enough good light and enough space to place tables and chairs for a convenient setup, and preferably not too far away from home.
By chance I discovered that Erlangen's urban administration actually offers a "room search", where you can search for rooms for all kinds of events and all kinds of group sizes. That actually helped me a lot to discover the possibilities - and now I'm waiting for answers.
If I can find a room, there will be a tablet-weaving workshop on the weekend August 31/September 1, similar to the one I gave in Belgium in January: Understanding how tablet-weaving works, so you can weave patterns without needing a pattern draft. Which, if you ask me, is the coolest and most exciting (and fun!) way to do tablet-weaving!