Wednesday 11 November 2015

How to make yourself very tired.

Here's a good recipe on losing some sleep, in a thoroughly enjoyable way:

Have an idea for a conference.
Find a place to run it, organise a caterer, and a place for the participants to stay.
Find about a dozen other people who are passionate about textile research, and historical textiles, and the crafts involved.
Get all of them, plus tools and books and materials, together in said place you organised - to share knowledge and try out things, for one whole week.
Throw a little experiment in with the mix...

... and there you go.

There was sprang, and tea, and coffee. There was much running (at least for me - to open doors, and gates, and nip back to fetch something). There was beautiful weather, and there was chocolate, and of course we had stroopwafels (which is a Dutch sweet and traditionally used for spinning at the Forum).


 There was silk reeling, and with it the admiration of both the intricate process and the dead bugs that made the coccoons.

In short, it was a wonderful week, full of textile crafts and research and learning, of friendly support of each other and discussions about which technique would be suitable, and how this or that could work. It was the European Textile Forum. It was also brutally exhausting - but I couldn't pick a better way to work on making yourself very, very tired!

3 comments:

Harma said...

Add traveling with public transport and you add an extra layer of tiredness. I'm still partly zombie.

Erik Von Norden said...

I enjoyed your post over at Freelance History Writer (where I have been an occasional contributor). It always seemed ironic that, when I go to Medieval Fairs, most of the attention is drawn to the fighters, when most of the interesting conversation is among the spinners and weavers. Keep up the good work, from Erik at theoryofirony.

a stitch in time said...

Harma - yes, travelling does not help with being tired...

Erik, I'm glad you enjoyed my guest post, and welcome to the blog!