The sun is shining, it's cold outside, and here are things from around the Internet!

There's a project on indiegogo to get a Mini-Mill from Canada all the way to Iceland, to spin the wool from local sheep into nice yarn. You can support that project starting with a 4 USD donation, and there are multiple perks to get hand-picked wool or yarns. So if you are looking for some really special fibre or yarn... you might find it just there.

Hugo Nomination Season is upon us, and will run until March 17. While I am, as usually, abysmally behind in reading current stuff, I do intend to nominate at least a few things. EscapePod, for one thing - and since there's some more spinning hours in the weeks ahead, I think I might find one or two more stories from 2016. In the "Best Related Work" category, Gillian Polack's "History and Fiction" is actually eligible... and I hope to find some more exciting stuff before the deadline. Hints about books and short stories published in 2016 that blew you away are utterly welcome!

While we're on the topic of reading, Aarhus Press Free Ebook of the month is "Elephants are not picked from trees", a book with stories about the taxidermied animals in Gothenburg National History museum.

Not free, but available again in digital version after they went out of print: past issues of Experimentelle Archäologie in Deutschland/Europa. You can have a look at the volumes on the EXAR website and click through the "buy" link to land on the publisher's homepage, where you can buy pdf downloads of individual articles from out of print volumes.

Aarhus University Press has another free e-book of the month that might be of interest for you: Things from the Town. Artefacts and Inhabitants in Viking-Age Kaupang.

It's a thick volume with its 485 pages, listing many different items. The official description for the book is this:

In this third volume deriving from the excavations of the Viking town of Kaupang of 2000-2003, a range of artefacts is presented along with a discussion of the town's inhabitants: their origins, activities and trading connexions. The main categories of artefact are metal jewellery and ornaments, gemstones, vessel glass, pottery, finds of soapstone, whetstones and textile-production equipment. The artefacts are described and dated, and their areas of origin discussed. The volume is lavishly illustrated.

There's a chapter about textile equipment which is mostly focused on spindle whorls, but it is not one of the most lavishly illustrated ones - and in fact, while the book does contain quite a few photos and drawings, they are not of very good quality, but rather strongly pixellated. Which is a pity, as the objects are really interesting.

I don't want to really complain though - it is still a free e-book with lots of information about finds from Kaupang, and having some more data about spindle whorls is never a bad thing!

Continuing from yesterday, for your amusement wants and procrastination needs - more links! To things!

The Atlantic has a piece about how the current incentives and structures make science worse, not better - The Inevitable Evolution of Bad Science.

Textilis has a post about Appliqué embroideries on medieval textiles.

If you're looking for a bit more to read, Isabella von Holstein's thesis "A light stable isotope (C, N, H, O) approach to identifying movement of medieval textiles in North West Europe" is available online here.

A Scottish lacemaking company is using modern computer technology to keep their looms running - CAD instead of punch cards.

If all that makes you want a sonic screwdriver, here's a knitting pattern for one. Functionality not guaranteed - unfortunately!

Can you guess what has accumulated during the last two weeks? Right. Links. Lots and lots of links about various topics... which means my browser has so many tabs open right now that it even scares me (and I'm nigh-undauntable by lots of open tabs).

So, here you go, in no particular order whatsoever:

A (short) history of pockets in women's clothing.

What archaeologists say about Trump's election. (Text of the post on Archaeologik is in German, but the links point to English pages.)

A 3D-Model of the medieval mikvah in London.

Aarhus Uni Press has Danish Medieval Castles as their free e-book of the month.

The Importance of Being Scared: An article about fairy tales and fear.

And that's it for today - more linky things tomorrow!

Routledge Publishing is doing a "Themes in Archaeology" thing, and they have finished setting up their themes now. To celebrate, the articles under these groups are free to read until April 30, 2017 -you can find the theme collection here.

In unrelated news, I'm working on the outline of an experiment we will do at the Forum, about how well dye penetrates a finished fabric. This is all very, very exciting, as whether something was dyed in the piece, in the yarn or in the fleece is quite a big difference regarding workflow and craft procedures - and after our experiment, we might have a tiny bit more knowledge about whether white spots could be expected in a piece-dyed fabric or not.

My typing is a little slower today, though - because the little cat is again hanging out on my desk, and I don't have the heart to set her down... she's having a few tough days, as she hurt one of her legs. As a result, she is to take pills (which she hates), painkiller (which she loves, it seems to taste like heaven) and, worst of it all, she is not allowed to go outside, to keep her from overworking her leg. So here I am, with one sad, bored, unhappy cat who needs a lot of cuddling and attention. Sooooo bored. Poor kitty.

In Peru, cotton textiles have been found that are the earliest evidence for indigo dyeing to date - about six thousand years old. Both the LA Times and the Smithsonian Magazine have an article about these finds.

It really is an amazing find - firstly because these textiles have survived at all for six thousand years, in a condition good enough to still see the blue colour, even though it's faded, with the naked eye. Secondly, it's not just a few fragments, it's thousands of them. Thousands!

The fragments have been cleaned and partly analysed; you can read an article about the dye analysis here.

Here you go, actual archaeology-related content:

The next Experimental Archaeology Conference (the tenth!) will take place in Leiden, Netherlands, Thursday, 20 April, 2017 to Saturday, 22 April, 2017. The Call for Papers is currently up, so if you'd like to submit something or just want more information, you can go here.

This is not your cup of tea? Or your loaf of cheese? Well, maybe this is: A bronze age ceramic pot found in Denmark contains residue of animal fat that might be from an attempt to make cheese.

Still not interesting? Maybe I can get you with this, then - Means of Exchange: Dealing with Silver in the Viking Age is the current free e-book of the month from Aarhus University.