I'm still busy with "normal life", containing a lot of spooling threads - but this time, they are coloured! In a joint venture with Sabine from the Wollschmiede, we are trying to bring back really fine, historically dyed silk threads for embroidery, weaving or whatever you can think of.

I have been wondering for some time why there are no such threads available on the market. Well, our current experience is: These thin silks are hard to prepare for dyeing, hard to dye, and even hard to portion off from the hank. On the other hand, they are really beautiful: Fine, glossy silks in awesome colours...

It never ceases to amaze me how experiment preparation develops. Even the loosest schedule will tighten up towards the end because of unforeseen complications. And in addition to that, every experiment planned will always take more time, effort and money in preparation and actual execution than planned - I've never had one running differently.

As you can probably guess from this, I was occupied with preparations for the Spinning Experiment yesterday. I spent about four and a half hours making the special spindle whorls, all shaped as cylinders. The reference whorl - a flat disc-shape - was by far the easiest to make, once I had found out how to best do it, while the two other clay shapes - tall, rather slim cylinders - each took much longer. I ended up with the planned 20 whorls for each shape plus two extras for the tall ones, and a few more extras for the reference whorls that will go into my teaching/demonstrating stack if enough survive the experiment. Now the only thing I have to do is to keep my fingers crossed that all the whorls will dry and fire well and without accidents - and after they are finished, I can do the necessary weighing and measuring to fix measurements for the two types of whorl still left to do (but those will be plywood whorls). And then the spinning experiment can start!

We spent the weekend doing something totally unrelated to medieval garments for a change, by going to a small townlet in the Franconian Forest (the German Wikipedia article is much better, if you can read German), quite close to where I grew up, and spent Sunday in this region doing a lot of eating and some bicycling on a trip to Hell and back.

If you now wonder what we were up to: We participated in the 7th "Frankenwald Radmarathon", a yearly event where you can cycle up to 250 km, going up lots of inclines out of valleys and back down into valleys. The event is amazingly well organised, and it seems as if 2300 cyclists are no problem at all for all the organisers and helpers - everybody is friendly, relaxed and helpful. The tour includes several larger roads (Bundesstraßen), and there are helpers from the fire brigades who even stop the cars so that the cyclists can roll through smoothly, without stopping. That really feels like being very, very important. The landscape is absolutely amazing, with forests, fields, little creeks, and many quiet roads where you hear nothing but the wind singing in your ears and the tires singing on the road. There are also lots and lots of food, starting with coffee and cake on Saturday, continuing with all-you-can-eat pasta (with sauce Bolognese) on the evening to fill up reserves, there's a breakfast buffet on Sunday morning (you can start tucking in at 5 o'clock there), and after the start at 7 o'clock, there's a stop every 30 km or so where you can re-fill your bottles, have a rest and eat and drink. They call it "Germany's only all-inclusive bicycle marathon", and it really is all-inclusive. We even joked that it's just eating, with the buffet tables spread a bit apart so you can have room for more food again. One of the "food stops" is in a place called "Hölle" - the German word for hell. (Where, incidentally, one of the sponsors is located: "Höllensprudel".)

In addition to all the food and drink and the beautiful landscape, with wild forests and houses all covered in schist shindles, the organisers and helpers manage to turn the whole event into one gigantic party. There's show dancing, music, music and cheering people in Stockheim when the peloton rushes over a large roadbridge for the start in the morning, and there are commentators at start, goal and on the steepest climb 10 km before the goal. And there are spectators dotted all along the road: People sitting on the sidewalk in lawn-chairs and watching, people watching from their gardens or balcony or out of their windows. On top of the last steep hill, there's a "fan mile" with a bunch of people cheering, shouting, photographing, making lots of noise to help motivate the cyclists, and one of the obligatory professional photographers making a picture of all those creeping uphill (about 1,5 km with up to 17% incline).

All together, it is a wonderful event - beautiful views, interesting routes, wonderful food and a great party. And we'll be sure to go to Hell again next year in August!

After the exhibition vernissage and before Cave Gladium, I now actually feel as if I had a little room for breathing and taking care of all the things left to moulder - like my book-keeping, or giving a semblance of order to my study, or sorting things. Yesterday was quite successful in terms of my to-do list, so I'm feeling more or less on schedule. That's nice!

So today, I'll take care of some of the stacks lying around here, putting things back into order and maybe clearing my totally cluttered desk a bit. This afternoon, I can at last collect my "cookie cutters" for making the spindle whorls for the Textilforum, and after that, I'll have some relaxed time for doing some textile work just for my own amusement, with no set goal or deadline.

On Monday, then, it's time to list all the things to be done, set new deadlines (in addition to the real ones, I do make "fake deadlines" for my own planning) and define priorities, get some book-keeping done and then rush back into business as usual. Including some new hitherto undisclosed ideas for the market stall...

No, I haven't become a printer. I am busy with the next additions to the market stall, and that means spooling. For example linen thread, that all-time favourite and staple for all handsewing purposes where firm seams in linen or wool are needed.

I have searched for nice, smooth, sturdy linen thread for quite some time, and I am happy to have found one finally with no or next to no slubs and imperfections in the thread. And now it's ready for sale, coming in white or off-white and on little brown paper spools with 20 metres of thread.


While brown paper is not an authentic medieval packaging, I have chosen it because it is easy to handle, quite eco-friendly, cheap to get and will at least not be blatantly modern-looking in a historical sewing kit. One day, I will find a wonderful solution to this problem - but for the moment, as I'm only establishing my stack of wares, this seems like the best way to me.

I more or less like deadlines. After all, this means that there is a set date at which it will all be over. I'm trying to meet all my deadlines, of course, but that means that I'm often wrestling with last problems and last-minute ideas in the week before, resulting in rather intense concentration on the one topic.

So the deadline, to me, is not only the set and slightly dreaded "time to be all finished", it's also the point of time after which I know I can turn again to other things. And this is rather nice, because while the projects are usually something I like to do, it can get a bit too much when immersed deeply for a longer stretch of time. And during the last days, other things are usually left to form heaps, literally and figuratively speaking, because I'm not able or willing to spend the extra effort on them.

When I've handed in something, I try to take a day or two off. That is needed anyway, because even when I try to put in a proper work day after T-0, there won't be much coming off it, resulting in frustration only. So the time is better spent for relaxing and recharging the batteries of the self.

After the deadline is before the deadline, though, so I usually need to get back on track pretty quick. And that is the thing I like least about the full immersion and the slack-off day after T-0: That it can be rather hard to take up all these other threads of thought and of work again and get back onto them. And this is exactly what I need to manage today, with new deadlines approaching (Cave Gladium one of them) and quite some things to take up again...

For the exhibition in Bad Staffelstein, I made video snippets to demonstrate both how the textile techniques look "in action" and to give a small impression about how time-consuming textile works can be. Here's one of the four snippets I made, showing tablet weaving in twill structure, done with modern weaving tools (also known as butchered playing cards). I translated the text into English - it's German in the exhibition, of course.

It's no teaching video, but it does show my weaving setup and work procedures - so tablet weavers might be able to see what I'm doing and how, and others hopefully still get an impression of how long such work takes, and that it's not the tools or any machinery that make the pattern, but the brains and hands of the person working.