When I started out with this blog, it was an easy way to keep track of the blogs I follow (quite a list, actually) and post. Including the possibility to schedule pre-written posts.

Then, a good while ago by now, hitting that "publish" button did not always work. You might remember a few posts coming up belatedly, or a day late, if you are a regular reader here. In these cases, there was usually a notice saying "An error occurred while trying to save or publish your post. Please try again." but not always. No notice, no re-try. No re-try, no published post. But well, that's something I could live with. The worst... it's yet to come.

Over time, I have come to rely on the reading list of the blogs I follow showing up the newest posts of each blog, so I'd scroll through and see very quickly who had posted about what, and whether I might want to click over there and read the full piece. From time to time, this list appeared empty, which was fixed upon reloading. No pain.

For the last 4 or 5 days, though, I get to see one post. One. And clicking the "view more" at the bottom does... nothing. This irks me, and makes me wonder whether it might be time to look for another blogging solution. (The list of other blogs is one of my very cherished and valuable resources to find something bloggable on days when I have nothing bloggable on hand, and it saved me many a time. So it's not just a little convenience - it has grown to be a blogging tool for me.)

I won't be looking into it right away, though - there are two papers to finish, and other stuff to plan and prepare (the next market, for instance). Plus the weather here is making me sleepy. (The cat taking her morning nap RIGHT BESIDE ME does not help at all, by the way. Couldn't she channel my sleepiness and just nap it away for me, too? She stubbornly refuses to do that. Something about having to get her own 12 hours of nap-time in per day or so, I suppose.)

I spent a good while sewing yesterday, and also poring over the sleeve problem that turned up on the current project dress. I've found, since I have done the attempt at reconstructing the medieval tailoring technique used for dresses such as St. Elisabeth's dress, that my typical method works less well with some body types. I have stumbled across this phenomenon again these days, and now I'm trying to tweak the method so it will accommodate them all. (Insert evil laughter here.) I'm not totally sure on how I will test-run this tweaked method, but cometh the time, cometh the idea.

I also need some coffee now, since there is lots to do but my energy levels this morning are a bit low. (Surely this has nothing to do with my sleeve-tweaking test right after hopping out of bed.)

In other news, also sewing-related, there's a challenge that I have heard about several times now: the "Historical Sew Forthnightly Challenge". Apparently, not only Cathy, but also VixHQ are participating. This led me to go and peek at the challenge list... it looks really nice, it does. If you are looking for a bit of external motivation for your sewing projects, that might be just the thing for you. For now, though, I have stuff to sew that might fit into the challenge, but is work stuff - and that would somehow feel like cheating to me.

Finally for today, here's an article about the use of hemp in Scandinavia, published in nature - you can download the full article for free, and I highly recommend it, as it covers the "linen" terminology problem.

Dear Doug, thank you so much for your January question. This was a welcome excuse to go waste a lot of time finally catch up on my blog statistics again. Though I confess that I am a slight bit confused by them...

To keep those of you not checking into Doug's summary up to date, January’s questions are:

What are your best (or if you want your worst) post(s) and why? Compare and contrast your different bests/worsts.
I leave it up to you to define what best is. We bloggers have all sorts of different stats available to us.

(Doug then gives a list of suggestions on what could be defining best and worst.)

So naturally, the first thing I did was look at stats. As all bloggers, I have the blogger stats available to me, plus I have an extra statcounter installed. Both are somewhat... lacking, to my taste, in giving a good and complete overview - the blogger one tells me that some of my early posts (from back in 2010 and 2009) have never received a single visit, which I find hard to believe. This one here, for example - which is admittedly not one of my most brilliant posts ever. However, at least the most patient husband of them all usually reads my blog every day, so it should have at least one view, right?

According to blogger stats, most of my relatively current posts get hits somewhere between the high twenties and low sixties, with outliers (often linky posts that get handed on by others) that are solidly in the one- to twohundred hit range. This is probably not counting any rss feeds, though I am not sure how many of you get this via feed.

The most viewed post of all time (9485 views) is actually a link post - this one here, linking on to instructions for unwinding a small skein of yarn. Follow-up with 6586 hits is my own post about how to untangle a skein of yarn, which has been popping up as the most viewed one consistently since I wrote it back in November 2009. I still like it, too - it's long and tries to be a little humorous as well. So that's probably what I would consider one of my best posts, in terms of effort spent to views gained, and possibly also helpfulness (at least I hope so).

Much lower in the hitcount lists are other posts that were a more than average effort to write, like the Skjoldehamn neck flap one (2775 hits). Pictures from this, however, have been turning up across the 'net (and not always with acknowledgement).
On a more positive note for me, posts about the Textile Forum (and there's many of them) are consistently getting higher hit counts than my normal posts, too - and since that conference project is one very close to my heart, this makes me very happy. They are not always what I'd consider a splendid piece of writing, though.

And some of my favourite posts in the blog are the ones about fair prices for crafts - all tagged under "fair prices for crafts campaign". They did get a good share of love (and hits), ranging somewhere between almost 500 and 1340 hits for the posts in the main series (the one also linked to on the sidebar).

That's about what I would consider the best posts of my blog. I won't go into the worst ones, though - with trying hard to post weekdaily all year around, there are bound to be plenty of non-brilliant posts just telling you that I ran out of ideas, or giving a random link and two lines of uninspired writing. I am sorry for those, and I feel a little bad about it every time I post such a one, but really - it can't be helped, and putting on pressure to be totes brill all the time... just won't work.

If you will tell me about your favourite post (or your least favourite one!) on this blog in the comments, though, I'd greatly appreciate that!

I am settling back into a normal work rythm after the winter break, though with more incentive to settle in quickly and efficiently this time - I have a deliciously large project on my desk.

In addition and as usual, this time of year is also interesting in regards to finishing stuff (such as the bookkeeping and tax stuff) and preparing stuff (such as fixing event dates for the coming months, and preparing for the big taxes thingie).

Finally, there's catching up to do - some catching up on the news, some on emails, and some on - you guessed it - interesting (or possibly interesting) links. So here you go:

Doug has summed up the archaeology blog carnival responses for December. It's a long post, and I was thrilled to be in there almost at the top. (I read all the way through it, though - it is worth it.) I'll post my reply to the January question one of the next days - once I have managed to look at my blog stats a bit...

If you are in the US and thinking of getting started in a conservation career, here's a grant to help.

There's a new book out, called "Clothing the Clergy" - it does sound interesting, but I have not been able to check it out yet.

If you are a language freak or just plain interested in the relation between languages, here is the graphic for you - and the blog posting that might then also be worth a closer look.

In case you are more interested in typology, you can play the kerning game here.

And as a final link for today, even though we're far away from Easter still, here's a post about the bioarchaeology of crucifiction.

I joined into Doug's Blogging Carnival last month (here is the digest and link list of all the 60+ bloggers who participated), and I did enjoy this a lot - I rarely blog to a topic that was pre-specified for me, and it's a nice challenge. Plus it has sidetracked me to a number of other archaeology blogs that I peeked into, and it sort of feels like connecting with other blogging archaeologists... even though it might be no "real" connection, if you know what I mean. (Don't fret if you don't. I'm rambling here.)

That said, I have just realised that December is not so very long anymore... so it's time for me to tackle the December questions for the Blogging Archaeology Carnival: What are "the Good, the Bad and the Ugly" of blogging for me?

The Good? There's a stack of things that I like about my blogging. It adds a little element of structure to my day (seldom a bad thing for a freelancer). It keeps me writing, and practising my English (never bad for a second language). I can try to be funny, share some personal things that I am excited about and that I want to get out into the world, help other folks spread the word about events, or blogs, or CfPs.
Also, I have an excuse to rootle around other blogs and investigate stuff and read up on things - it's research for my daily blogging, since I have to have something to write about, right? And I am absolutely delighted if I get a nice comment, or if I meet somebody at a conference or on a fair or at an event and get to hear something like "oh, that is your blog? I've been reading it for ages!"

The Bad of blogging is there, too. Of course. The days when I don't feel like blogging and have to do it anyways - because I am supposed to. Stretches of days when I feel like I have nothing to say that is of any interest to anybody, and that I am blogging such lame stuff that I will lose tons of readers. The times when I have so many links piled up that even though that's plenty of stuff to blog about, I can't get the motivation to get them into something like order and package them into a suitable post. And sometimes I would love to get some more comments, some more feedback, just to have an inkling on how I am doing. (Myself, I'm not much of a commenter on other blogs, too - so I probably should not complain about that one.)

On the Ugly front, though, I am happily almost untouched. I have not gotten any real bad vibes due to blogging, I have not lost jobs or opportunities (at least not that I know of), or had other grievances. The worst that happens to me, blog-wise, is someone re-posting things without acknowledging their source and the occasional spammer attack. There's no way to completely prevent the first, so I just shrug it off; the latter has been greatly reduced by turning comment moderation on for posts that are older than three days or so.

Here you go, Doug - that's my Good, Bad, and Ugly of Blogging.

The links have been piling up again, so here you go - a whole stack of them:

An article about the education of upper-class women in the Middle Ages - I found that very interesting.

Diachronic Design is a blog and webpage concentrating on computers in archaeology - there's not too much content yet, but it could be worthwhile to watch.

Pompeii is crumbling (German blog Archaeologik posts links to Italian articles about collapses).

Doug has done the roundup and synopsis of the (many!) answers to his first Blogging Archaeology Carnival, "Why do you blog".

In case you haven't seen the box-turns-something-else yet, here is the link. (I think this is way, way cool. The only question I have in regards to similar folding thingies is - where in hell do you put the mattress? You still have to store that somewhere, right? And it will be... bed-sized. So no actual space-saving takes place.)

The British Library has a medieval manuscripts blog, covering for example the marginalia of the Gorleston Psalter.

A very interesting post on sharing data: Archaeology and Github (over on Powered by Osteons).

And finally, a (German-language) repository and database of old cooking recipes, dated 1646 until the 20th century.

Enjoy!

I have found out about Doug's "Blogging Archaeology" carnival half a month ago, when that post was quite new. Now Rainer Schreg from Archaeologik (which is a mostly German blog) has joined in, bilangually. He has also condensed the basic info about that carnival beautifully:

At the SAA annual meeting 2014 in Texas there will be a Blogging Archaeology session. The weblog Doug's Archaeology by Doug Rocks-Macqueen contributes by hosting a blogging carnival (explained here). Each month leading up to the SAAs in April, Doug will post a question. Answers will be blogged at the individual blogs. At the end of each month, Doug will collect all posts and add their links.

The blogging topic for November: Why blogging? – Why did you, or if it was a group- the group, start a blog? Why are you still blogging?


Ever since I have read about the carnival, I was on the fence about it. Yes, I do have a blog, and I am an archaeologist, but I don't really see my blog here as a proper archaeology blog. But what the heck - I am going to join into the fun today, and I will let you (and Doug!) decide whether my blog is an archaeology blog - or not.

I started blogging back in 2008, December - the fifth blogiversary is almost upon me, can you believe it? When I started out, I had just finished my PhD thesis and was searching for a publishing house to take it on; I was starting out as a freelancer full-time, and I had no idea where my life would actually go. I was, however, already mostly out of the digging part of archaeology. (I loved the digs, but I tend to get knee issues when digging, and I knew years before that I did not want to do the actual digging forever.)

My (not-so-secret) plan was to regularly post things about archaeological textiles or garments and share things that I do, or find, including tips for computer gadgets, websites, books, and Calls for Paper. The blog was started because I had been reading blogs for a good while and just liked how people would share things and post excitingly interesting links, but it was also intended, right from the start, as a method of getting word about my work out there into the world - the work which happens to be connected, at least, to archaeology.
This blog saw my first bigger museum projects, as well as the birth of the Textile Forum. I have partly documented quite a few of my projects, and, as usual for blogs, started this or that blogging venture that soon tapered off into nothing (anyone remember the "all the gory details" venture? No? I'm glad you don't.). I have also used it to bleg, with varying success (mostly due to the very obscure things I was blegging for!) and have, according to plan, posted some things about medieval garments and other actually old things (tagged as "togs from bogs" even though they are not all bog finds).

Basically, the blog still does what I intended it to do, from the start - I share details (or vague allusions, in some cases) about my ongoing projects, I blog about conferences (mostly the CfPs, that is), occasionally about archaeological textiles, experimental archaeology or crafts, and there's a bit of self-promotion sprinkled in. There are not so many posts about ancient textiles as I had secretly hoped and planned to do, which is to the most part due to their taking up quite a lot of time. However, I still manage to blog most days, just like I planned from the start. There are blog-less days due to holidays, or conferences, or illnesses, but you get a post every weekday otherwise.
Just in case you wonder now why I planned on blogging Monday to Friday from the very beginning... that's because I was convinced that otherwise I would totally forget that it was Blog Day Today. Which I still am. And nothing is more frustrating than a blog you enjoy not posting at least from time to time, semi-regularly. So I made a decision to go for a daily post, even if just a short one, even if it would mean less really big and substantial posts due to time issues, because I personally would prefer having regular smaller updates to having very occasional bigger ones. And also, for me personally, if a blog only updates once in a blue moon, it needs to have really, really good and interesting posts to make me want to bother and check in on it from time to time.

I'm still blogging, obviously. I do it because I still think it's a good idea, and I hope what I have to say is helpful and interesting to readers - surely not every thing for every reader, but nobody manages that. So I blog on, even though sometimes it is hard to find the ideas, or something to blog about, or the motivation to add in those links and format those pictures. (Yes, sorry, I'm a lazy person in that respect.) The blogging in the morning (my morning, in case you are time-shifted) has become part of my daily routine, and I'd probably miss this. I would probably also miss having the blog as a good excuse to read other blogs and keep up with stuff and randomly click interesting links all because well, I need to have something to blog about, and maybe I could blog about that tomorrow?
When I have a bad day (or week), and I think about stopping the blog, I keep going because a) it would be stupid to have made all this investment of time and effort and good vibes into the blog just to stop because of a bad streak, and b) much more importantly, I hope that there are  people who would actually miss their regular read here, and the occasional useful link. Also, I still think defunct blogs are sad, and I don't want to add to the overall sadness of the Internet.

So there you have it. That's why I started blogging, and why I still keep on doing it.