It's gotten a good bit cooler here, though it's still plenty warm, and there's still a heatwave in the prognosis for next week - which is, well, not the best of things if you ask me.

The Forum mails have been sent out, there are the first registrations for the Forum coming in, and I am very profoundly relieved that this is running now.

The hose have arrived at the place where they are supposed to be, so all that remains now is to send off the paper with numbers on it (which has been prepared, and is ready to go out once I've finished blogging).

I am, however, still woefully behind on some other things, and I do need to do some more post packing today and early tomorrow. Unfortunately the Little Cat is still not really better; the infection has come back even though we have seen no obvious cause of extra stress. The last meds she had made her all drowsy and lose her appetite, which is not good, so now we are trying different meds and hope these will help. 

It's well possible that the heat was one of the factors, even though it wasn't a really obvious one. Whatever it was, we're now trying to give her some mussel powder that is supposed to assist with bladder issues, and lots of cuddles, and also sneaky treats to hide her pills in. 

To my great dismay, the ones that worked wonderfully last time still worked... until the package was empty. Then, alas, we bought a new one, but they smelled and looked differently, and the company must have changed the recipe sufficiently that she is not interested in them at all anymore. There we were, buying the other taste variant, same outcome. Meh all over.

Now, fortunately, we have successfully tested another snacky thing that is soft enough to hide a small pill in, and apparently tasty enough to be inhaled almost whole. Phew. So now we hope the new stuff does its job, and does it well, and she will be able to tolerate the meds sufficiently, and that we can get her stabilised afterwards. She is, after all, long past the generally expected lifetime for a little cat, which in general does not increase tolerance to stuff. 

No, not the video yet, I'm sorry. But you do get a screenshot... 

...and you only get this for a blog post today, because I was at a nice presentation with lunch afterwards, and the rest of the day slipped into this and that and now I'm sending out the info about the Textile Forum registration being online. Hooray! 

That was a nice weekend, with a guided tour through the fantastic exhibition in the Burg Trausnitz in Landshut about women's networks through marriage in the late Middle Ages (still running until start of August!) and then my sprang workshop for the eight participants (all women, very fitting for the talks about women and their networking, and their room where all kinds of tasks happened).

And to my great delight, the Textile Forum logistics issues are solved, we have a cook, I have an agreement with him, and thus the Call for Papers and the registration information are finally online. I still need to write the newsletter about this, but in case you are interested in geeking out one full week about knots as part of textile crafts in November, you can already visit the updated site here. 

Also, our wildlife camera caught two hedgehogs making new hedgehogs last week! If I can figure out how to post that video here, you might get a look at some point ; ) 

It's still way too hot here, the Little Cat is better (at least it looks like it to us), and I am getting the hose stuff ready to be sent off. 

Thanks to my lovely model whom you can see in this picture, you can now see how it could have looked when it was new, and still had its feet on, and the thighs were not yet worn through. It was definitely an adventure!

The hose will go to the castle museum in Urach, where it will be mounted so it looks nice as it chills in its own little place in the exhibition. But there will be a piece of the fabric to touch for the visitors, which is always something that I really appreciate.

So... this is done, and I'm looking forward to the weekend (where I will give a sprang workshop in Landshut), and then... the summer break draws near. And other, new adventures.

(Though it would be nice if they were coming with a little less heat outside. Have I mentioned that it's way, way too hot here?) 

So. Things are going on.

First and furriest of all, the Little Cat has a bladder infection indeed, but - as we suspected - it's due to stress and not a bacterial infection. (We got some sedative for her before the vet trip so the stress-induced bladder infection would not cause more stress by a vet visit without a little chemical assistance, especially as there would be an ultrasound, and guess who is not a fan of getting her very fluffy belly un-fluffed with a razor.) So she's currently getting drugs to relieve the internal itch and pressure, and extra cuddles. Plus extra treats to hide the pills in, and she is not at all opposed to that. Hopefully, her internal plumbing system will find a happy equilibrium again as soon as possible, so everything goes back to boringly normal again.

Other things going on are concerning the website, which still has its big update coming up. It does look like most of the big issues that I'd found will be solvable sort of easily. I'm also planning to tackle the dead images that I have hanging around here - after years of running this and migrating this and that here and there, and different blog softwares that had different ideas on where to store pictures, and whether to store different sizes or not, there's, well, extras. 

I have tried to sort a few of them out already, and they are probably mostly in the blog - but if you should stumble across a missing image link, please do let me know. (Well, it's appreciated at all times, but it's especially appreciated after some work on the site.) The big work will not be for a while, but I have a few things that can be done straight away before larger updates, and the plan is to do that - it's less work, and also less opportunities to mess something up, when the day of doing stuff arrives.

And now I will gently move myself away from the computer to do some preparation for the sprang workshop on the Saturday...

Two things for today: It's still too damn hot, and the Little Cat has some issue with her bladder and we have a vet appointment to go to. Hopefully it's nothing too bad... 

After fiddling with the feet (the small bits at the end always take more time than seems fair!) the hose is now finally finished. I'm very happy that it is, and there's nothing that went superduper wrong, but I'm also not over the moon. 

With all the pattern making and pattern taking and pattern transferring, after having cut the very first pattern attempt a little too small, it's now a little too large. Not really bad, but, well, it would sit even nicer if it were a tiny bit tighter.

Fortunately it's not intended to be worn by my most patient model husband, but it will be in a case with a support that fits it right, so I'm trying to not beat myself up over it too much. It also has quite a bit of fold puddling around the ankles, but again, a little tighter would make this less obvious. And since the linen fabric is not very stretchy, and it needs a bit of room for the feet to pass through, well, I think the extra width at the ankle could have been less, but not avoided entirely.

The whole thing could have profited from some nice fitting sessions after cutting and before sewing, but I have to admit skipping these because I was afraid the fabric could unravel too much when fitting. (Also see above, the goal was a reconstruction to sit in a case, not one to fit perfectly.) There's some other bits that I would like to tweak some more, where I'm not entirely happy with how it worked out, and I do wonder if there's a better (read: quicker and less annoyingly fiddly) way to make the foot parts. 

For now, though, I'll be happily done with the thing. There's a few touching samples of the fabric to be seamed, then it will all go off to its new permanent home, and I can prepare for the sprang workshop this weekend!