Wednesday 18 September 2013

I am back home again.

I have returned back home - back to bad weather (today it's raining hard), back to my comfy desk, and (of course) a large stack of stuff to deal with, such as the accumulation of mail both electronic and physical.
The next days will thus be dedicated to getting back up to date (and speed). You, however, will probably want to know how the Forum went... and I can tell you: it was fantastic.

There was a really nice bandwidth of papers, and our new format of paper and corresponding practical unit has met with much approval and made our Forum the most productive one that we had yet. We will definitely stay with this format!
We had a go at loopbraiding, reconstructing late antique underwear, and there was some weaving being done; our resist dyeing experiment took place (with results that are partly making me happy and partly making me wish we'd had some more time beforehand for testing things), and embroidered tunics from late antiquity were looked at and the technique reconstructed. The lab made it possible for us, in addition to the planned practical units, to have an impromptu experiment take place, researching the different outcomes of pressing fabrics into clay pots.

The forum was one full week stacked to the brim with ideas, tries, techniques and textiles. It made me very, very tired but also extremely happy - and even though the papertrail of this year's event has not been cleared yet, I am already looking forward to the next one!

4 comments:

Cathy Raymond said...

It sounds as though you had a wonderful time. Good to have you back, though.

What item of late Antique underwear did you get to construct? I'm curious.

a stitch in time said...

I did have a wonderful time!

And the item was... a leather brief, tanga, underpant thingie. Very much fun.

Helene said...

Are the proceedings for Textile Forum published somewhere?

a stitch in time said...

Helene, yes, they are published - as "Ancient Textiles, Modern Science" in Oxbow. You can also order them via my online shop shop.pallia.net :)