Conny and Ernst are running a small lace making factory in the next village Rattelsdorf.
Hardly anyone knows about it and embroideries and textile industry is not associated with the area. Their manufacturing business here is the result of many movements within what has for a long time been a global textile industry.
Conny's grandparents had an embroidery factory in Plauen, and after Germany was split in two, her father decided to leave the DDR, and came to West Germany, then got a good position at an embroidery factory in Pakistan. Later he started work at a small embroidery in Breitengüssbach, which is 6 km away, and started his own business in Rattelsdorf in the 1970ies. The machines are from Plauen, and they are the embroider's equivalent of the Heidelberger printing machines - they run for decades, and move on from modernising/dying factories to countries where it's still profitable to use them. Conny and Ernst sold one machine to Turkey last year.
Ernst is from an area in Austria that is very well know for its whitework embroideries, and his family has also been involved in embroidery for generations.
In Rattelsdorf they keep the machines running and produce mainly curtains for what Conny calls the "countryhouse-style" niche, and they're distributing to small shops which can't get small runs from the wholesalers. And as Conny says, it's their lifeblood that keeps it running.

Posted June 29, 2011 19:08 by Kathrin Böhm

10 ducks arrived in their new home.
On day three they ventured out of their shed.
They have a lovely piece of the garden - all green with a small pool and shady trees.
Until late September.

Posted June 27, 2011 13:32 by Kathrin Böhm

The latest fashionable orange nail varnish enters our lives on Friday evening, it's a freebee with Harper's Bazar, which DJ brought back from London. On Saturday evening we all have orange finger nails, just in time for the annual village "Johannisfeuer" - a bonfire to mark Saint John's Day, but surely a pagan thing deep down. Theodor announces: "the soul is orange".

Posted June 26, 2011 13:32 by Kathrin Böhm

The "Beavertail" tile has been in common use until larger industrial tiles in a range of other shapes and colours came on the market. The Beavertail tile can be made from local clay, using just a simple metal frame and wire. We made some together with Herrn Back during the clay workshop last year. We also discussed making the clays for the chapel refurbishment ourselves as a village, but the costs would roughly be Eur 3000, and considering that the tiles to be replaced are only 60 years old, it makes little economic nor historical sense. Besides the fact that village spirits are still kind of running low, and group exercises aren't particularily popular. So the chapel gets brand new tiles from the factory - this time with two noses. The old one had one "nose", the hook to fix the tile, and the tilemakers could often be identified by the nose they made.

Posted June 23, 2011 20:21 by Kathrin Böhm

Tuesday, 21st June at 21.45.

Posted June 21, 2011 21:12 by Kathrin Böhm

Andi asked me to document the renovation - well , the complete refurbishment - of the chapel. I'm updated on the building work schedule, and today they took down the top of the tower, which needs to be enlarged to host the automated bell system. Living right in front of the chapel this is a very feasible task and I wouldn't even have to leave our front room, but it's always good fun to be standing around in the street for a while.

Posted June 20, 2011 21:05 by Kathrin Böhm

A few entries ago I was joking about the concrete planter that has been sitting in front of the chapel for decades and has recently been removed for the upcoming refurbishment work. I just found out that it's gone for good, and my response to Andi and Holger was that they should have considered its potential historic value. What if it would have still been there in 2080? What a treasue it would have been - plain no-nonsense concrete design from the 1970ies. Hard to replace.

Posted June 14, 2011 20:33 by Kathrin Böhm

Wild strawberries, plenty of them in the woods at the moment.

Posted June 13, 2011 10:02 by Kathrin Böhm

Rosa is not ringing the bell anymore.
The clock is stuck on half past three.
The flowers are gone.
Groups of people are seen in front of the chapel gesticulating.

The current chapel has been built 60 years ago, and it's not in any way modernist or brutalist, it's just the village chapel, but preservative arguments are running versus tidy-it-all-up mentality. It's hard to judge whether it's just pragmatism or plain aesthetics, but things like the front door are going to stay, but the tiles will be replaced. The outside will be repainted, the clock tower will get automated, and no-one knows if the nice plain concrete flower planter in the front will survive. There is a tendency for more timber and woody looking things in any public space around here. 

Posted June 11, 2011 08:05 by Kathrin Böhm