I'm in a Blogger's Dilemma today.

Let us assume that this blog has non-knitting readers as well as knitting readers (I think that's still the case, if I haven't chased off the non-knitters by now). Let me state for the non-knitters that there is a well-known online knitting magazine, that also happens to be free of charge (which is named, ever so fittingly, Knitty). In said online knitting magazine there are regular issues and, in between these dates, "surprises" - extra patterns coming up.

Now, Knitty is a good, professional magazine that pays their pattern-makers money (not too much, but they do pay a honorarium) and generates traffic for their sites (quite a lot). They also have a newsletter that will inform subscribers about the new issues and the surprises. They are, in addition, so well known and liked that forums like Ravelry will, of course, have threads mentioning their patterns - both regular issue and surprise patterns. So you can probably assume that most knitters who are active online have at least heard of Knitty.

Now for the dilemma. If, say, there is an absolutely delightfully weird and skewed sock pattern in a surprise issue of Knitty, should a blogger with an audience of both knitters and non-knitters mention the totally delightful weirdness of that sock pattern? The breathtaking hotness of the heels? The wonderfully biased stripings of the variegated yarn? The fun fact of a sock toe starting at the big toe instead of somewhere in the middle of the foot where there's actually no toe sticking forth to fill the very tip of the sock? Even devote a whole blog post to that single sock?

Will the knitters be bored because they, of course, have already looked at the pattern and admired the shrewd cleverness of the pattern designer? Will they turn away and say "uh, another lame blog entry about things long known"? There are at this moment already 40 projects of this sock on Ravelry, after all (rav links only accessible to members, sorry).
Meanwhile, will the non-knitters cringe with boredom, or will they rather scratch their heads and say "uh, she's gone completely over the brink now, let's go look for another blog to read regularly instead - one with no weird and/or boring knitting content", because they might not understand how a sock construction can be totally exciting?

Please tell me. I'm all curious.

You'd have thought that after last year's Kindle eclat, Amazon would have learned their lesson, right? That it is just not smart to mess with books listed on the website by just taking them off (and taking them off reader's Kindles too, while you are at it)?

Well... it seems they haven't learned.
With the rise of e-books, a discussion has come up between publishers, agents, authors and (e-)booksellers about fair pricing of e-books and fair shares of profits. Then last week Macmillan (a not-so-small publishing group) wished to discuss a move to an agency model/commission sharing with their e-books on Amazon. The latter wasn't delighted (though actually they would not lose money with that model - on the contrary). And just because Amazon thought it would be good to throw a tantrum... they pulled Macmillan books off their website. All books, mind you, not just the e-books. Why on earth they thought that to be a good idea? I don't know. But it makes me a bit wary of them.

I do rely on Amazon for a stack of things - English books, mostly, and the (very) occasional non-book item. Their wishlist or direct links are a very convenient way to give other folks an idea of the things you like or to make sure that the presents you receive are really what you wished for. Their "express shipping" option has made me happy once and saved my butt one other time (though I do prefer buying in local brick-and-mortar stores for those goods normally). But actions like these make me think of looking for an alternative.

My book is being listed on Amazon by now, and I had originally planned to post about that today. I was pondering to post a link to the A.-site for it, but I was of two minds about that, because I still believe in supporting the local bookstore. I won't post a link to their site now.

There are more options than just the Big River Store: You can pre-order the book via every brick-and-mortar and every online bookshop. You can order directly from the publishing house. Or, if you don't want the book straight away and really soon, you can also buy a copy from me - I will be dragging copies of the book along to every market and event I will be going to in 2010, and I will be happy to sell them (so I don't have to drag them all back home).

It's time for me to clear away again that bunch of tabs that have accumulated (I keep tabs open with interesting things to blog about)...

First of all, phiala has started to collect museum databases on her blog and welcomes suggestions for more.

A new issue of dragtjournalen (a free e-journal) has come out - you can download the pdf file on the draktjournalen website.  The issue includes an article by Else Østergård about the history of linen; the whole journal is in Danish.

On other news, I'll be doing a much-looked-forward-to run to the post office today, to post... yes, the proof that has finally been finished! This feels like a huge load off my back. Hooray!

My normal life style does not include lots of reading or listening to the news, but even if you don't try to catch news every day, the big issues sooner or later still come up somewhere. Like the Haiti earthquake.
To help with relief in Haiti, the Yarn Harlot has put up the knit signal (like the bat signal, but with more yarn) and asks for donations to MSF (Médecins sans Frontières, which means Doctors Without Borders).

MSF has been doing great work all over the world for many years, and I personally think that they are one of the best humanitarian organisations to give money to - because besides other reasons, very very little of the donations does go into the overhead, and most goes to where it is needed. So if you have a little money left over, consider giving them a bit - and if you need a better pro-donation pep talk, read Stephanie the Yarn Harlot's blog.

I actually missed my blogiversary, which was on December 8 - that was Tuesday last week. And that even though I had marked it in my calendar, to be sure I won't forget it.

But then the internet-less time came, and the trials and tribulations of the move, and the stacks of boxes distracted me, and I completely forgot the blogiversary. Even though I think that it really is something worth celebrating - a year is quite a bit of time, after all!

When I started this blog last December, I was not sure at all how blogging would work out for me. I knew, however, that I did want the blog to offer something new regularly. Some blogs I had already read for a good while did inspire me to do the blogging-daily thing, and the most important of those is Kristin Nelson's blog Pub Rants. No, it has nothing to do with watering holes, selling beer and snacks, it's short for "publication", and I really liked (and still like) her style of writing and the fact that - with very few exceptions - I could have a few minutes every day, reading the news from Kristin, half-way across the globe.

And now, after the first year of blogging, I am really happy I tried it. I have a bunch of regular readers (and commenters), and getting feedback on the things I do and the texts I write does feel wonderful. Posting weekdaily is by far not as difficult as I had feared. Of course there's the occasional day where I can't think of anything much, but there are a few strategies that help with that: I try to cover one topic only per post and store other ideas in the drafts section, I try to have one or two "emergency posts" completely pre-written in the drafts section, and I am just generally on the watch for bloggable things - interesting links and webpages, for example. And then of course I don't blog on the weekends, and I will take time off* for holidays, events and travelling, things where blogging would be difficult or troublesome. All that together makes daily blogging a fun thing to do for me, a nice way to start off my day, and I hope that it will stay like this for at least a year or two more!

* All that time off results in about 203 posts during the one year, which is about 0.5562 posts per day, or one post every 1.79 days. Which sounds much less impressive than "I blog daily". You see me humbled.

Quite a little stack of links to interesting places and things has accumulated in my "slow blogging day" stash, but they are much too good to languish away. So here's a link drop - I hope there's something for you in there, too!

- Two blogs that recently came to my attention: Fait Attention and Publishing Archaeology.

- For those of you working with MS Word, there's a webpage with tons of good advice, instructions, makros and stuff at the Editorium. This site has helped me a lot when finishing off and layouting my thesis. I still wouldn't recommend to use pictures in large Word files, though. (My pics were layouted half-automatically, using the Word-generated picture list, a homemade makro and LaTex. Not the best layout ever, but very little work.)

- A new project is researching medieval soldiers "to challenge assumptions about the emergence of professional soldiery between 1369 and 1453", and they have put a database online where you can search almost 90 000 muster records for soldiers from 1369 to 1453. So don't forget The Soldier in Later Medieval Times when you are looking for muster information!

- I'm very happy that I usually don't have to cope with Latin (and I would look for help if I had to), but for those who are, there's Du Cange's medieval latin glossary available online: beware the rather large .pdf.

- And for those who read French, there's a bimonthly magazine called "Histoire et images Medievales", with some articles available for download. And of course with nice pictures!

A few days ago, I discovered that a colleague who also studied archaeology at Bamberg has been blogging since 2007 - he is not only excavating and publishing the results, he is also doing a very nice job designing virtual 3D models of historical sites and buildings. On the blog, Mathias Hensch is writing about his excavation work and the historical context, including photos of buildings and of course trenches (and archaeologists in trenches).

If you can read German or like to look at archaeologists at work, take a look at the blog of Schauhütte - Archäologische Dienstleistungen!