Of knitting, spinning, and the Grimming

So, yesterday I went to the mountains… Rather than enjoying the lovely summer weather by engaging in some outdoor activity, though, I spent most of my time there in dusky old churches, taking photos of medieval wall-paintings. The bulk of my trip was spent in the small village of Pürgg in Styria: With its old

The church, the bee and the flower

Last weekend I was in Carinthia, to do what art historians generally do, i.e. look at paintings and other old stuff in churches. Ok, not all art historians generally do things like that, but for those of us specialising in the Middle Ages it is pretty common… One of the churches on my list for

The Yarn Market at Dunster

Knitting hasn’t been exactly on top of our agendas these past few months, and consequently there have been few if any yarn-related entries on our blog. But, as you will have gathered from its title, this post finally sees us return to the subject of yarn and textile history. Don’t get your hopes up too high,

Three trips to Hungary

As you will remember, earlier this year I returned to Oxford 15 years after my first visit there. Only a few days later, [m] and I visited Brighton, and while we were there I realized that I’d first been to Brighton a whole 20 years ago, back in 1992. And, a little while ago, I went

A unicorn for Christmas

It is a truth universally acknowledged that girls love unicorns.* So if you still haven’t found the perfect Christmas present for your daughter or your little niece yet, why not choose a pet unicorn? Pet unicorns are cute and cuddly and just about the size of a cat or a little doggie: The only problem

Dear 19th century…

…I’m aware that in the past I have, occasionally, spoken somewhat dismissively about some of the architecture, especially some of the castle architecture, you have produced. Now the thing is, dear 19th century,* I don’t have anything against you and your castles, but as a medievalist I do sometimes find it frustrating when, for instance,

Tyrol Castle

Both our last two posts already featured pictures of Tyrol Castle, the ancestral seat of the Counts of Tyrol. In these photos [here and here, to be precise], you may already have admired the castle’s high rising keep with its pointed roof, and the battlements and parapets that surround it. Like most castle architecture that

What we did on our holidays (1495 edition)

I know we promised you mountains, but this will have to wait until [m] finds the time to put together a blog post. You see, where I come from the landscape looks like this… … so, frankly, I don’t feel competent to write about mountains. [m], on the other hand, is a regular Heidi –

Coming soon…

We’re just back from our holiday – we’ll be blogging about it more extensively in the course of the next few days (or probably weeks), but for the moment here are a few visual teasers of what to expect: … mountains… … castles … … and medieval wall paintings.

Deleted Scenes, pt. 2

October 24, 2010 These are some medieval floor tiles (13th or 14th century) from the Abbey at Klein-Mariazell in the Wienerwald region. I almost used the photo in this post from October 27 but in the end I decided against it – simply because I felt that, aesthetically, it didn’t fit in with the other images