Free stuff! On the Internet! Who would have thought it, right? Apart from... all of us?

Here are some exciting things for you to enjoy. At least I find them exciting. Especially this one, about which I learned at the LonCon, from one of the lovely English Heritage folks:
English Heritage Research Department Reports Database. The Research department of EH has recently put all their reports online, and they are free to download and peruse. There is a keyword search, and "textiles" yields 190 reports.

You are still here? Next one, then.
Maney Publishing is featuring Postmedieval Archaeology as their Journal of the Month - which means that the last 6 issues (3 years) are free to read and download during September.

In case you prefer to read conservation literature, you can visit the Bibliographic Database of the Conservation Information Network, BCIN for short.

Too many words, too little pics? Heather sent me this BBC article link, which I pass on to you. The TL;DR version: someone has uploaded millions of pictures from 1500 - 1922, auto-tagged for search convenience, all copyright-free. Here's the direct link to the flickr site.

Anyone still here?

No?

Good. Thought so.

The cat, sleeping contentedly beside my desk again (lucky cat) just looked at me a minute ago, slightly confused. The reason for that? This video:




(Sorry for the facebook-link - I'd have preferred to link the video directly, but could not figure out how to do that.)

I laughed so hard I had to cry. Which, in turn, made the cat stare at me. (Weird humans.)

In other news: the library at Erlangen has digitised manuscripts available online, I have a medieval event coming up, I've finally managed to re-stock my beeswax pieces, and am planning to fire a batch of spindle whorls the coming weekend.

Also it finally rained during the last two days - finally! The garden was really parched, so it was high time. (The lawn outside has been in crunchy summer edition mode for a few weeks now, and as usual, it will recover - but the strawberries and tomatoes and flowers don't take the heat and drought so well.)

It's extremely hot around here - too hot for the season, actually, both Bamberg and Erlangen scored new heat records for June yesterday. And today? We're in for another very hot day, so very soon I will close all the doors and windows to keep as much of the morning cool inside and leave the heat outside.

The heat is one of the reasons we did not do much during the long weekend - and I think everybody was happy that yesterday was a public holiday, it was certainly much too hot to work. It's warm enough to have switched from drinking tea, mostly, to my favourite summer drink, based on something I had in a pub once that they called "thai lemonade". The original consisted of mostly water with fresh ginger, fresh lemongrass, mint leaves and lime juice, with some sugar to round off the taste. I'm unfortunately lacking proper fresh lemongrass and I usually skip the sugar, but if you are looking for a refreshing summer drink - just get those ingredients, throw them into a carafe, fill with cold water and let it stand for a bit. If you prefer mint with other tastes, some sprigs of mint and a small handful of crushed raspberries will also give a nice flavour to a 2-litre carafe of water. (Probably works with strawberries too, but I don't have the self-control at this time of year to put them into a water jug... I eat them. All.)


And if you are looking for something to read along with your drink, I have recently been waylaid by some articles at phys.org. They have stuff about sheep genome. And horse gaits. Plus a plethora of other interesting articles.

If you'd rather read something older, you can head over to the British Library website - the Simeon manuscript has been digitised.

There's things that digital books will never be able to do. The hefty feel of a book's weight in your hands, the neat rows of books standing in a shelf, the smell of printer's ink and paper, the beauty of a well-executed binding.

The way a well-loved, often-used book falls open at favourite passages. The little scars and blemishes and tiny drops of tea and tomato sauce that attest to a book's being so captivating that you had to keep reading even while eating. The fact that you can glance at where you are in that book and get a little sad that you are already halfway through... Books, real, physical books are a wonderful thing.

However, that's regarding modern books. Books that are in print, and that you can get easily. For manuscripts, though, I will sing a different tune: Manuscripts are rare, and precious, and hard to gain access to, so I am happy for every single one that gets digitised and put online.

Such as the Stuttgarter Psalter. Or the Utrecht Psalter. (You can even download the latter as .pdf, which is just wonderful.) The Codex Manesse (also downloadable).

In case you are wondering why this comes up now (again) - I am leafing through manuscripts looking for depictions of spinning women (or men, I'll take them just as gladly) from before the 13th century. Any hints, links or pictures are more than welcome!

If you've ever wondered whether to take up a career in academia or go drug dealing instead, you might want to read this article about how Academia resembles a Drug Gang (h/t to Archaeologik).

Or you can read digitised journal (old ones, mostly, and in German) at the Unibib Jena. (They also have "Alt-Thüringen", which may be of interest if you are archaeologically inclined.) I haven't really found out what they all have, yet - but I thoroughly appreciate the rising number of digitised things.

Speaking of which, you can leaf through the entirety of some cool and interesting books, including the original manuscript of Alice's Adventures, the Lindisfarne Gospels, and many more if you go here. Thank you, British Library!

The day has not even stated properly, and I'm already feeling scatterbrained. That's not good, especially not since I have a stack of reading work to take care of today, and a trip to the library on my to-do list.

So in best scatterbrainy tradition, here's stuff for you to look at:

Mediävist Jaques Le Goff died on April first (not a joke). He was one of the big guys (here's his Wikipedia page).

Medieval Manuscript blog has horses fighting so their owners don't fight alone. (They also have lots of other fun stuff. That blog ought to be on your reading list if you are interested in manuscripts and quirky pictures therefrom.)

There's a tumbler about People of Colour in history (including medieval times), with interesting links.

And here's a collection of pictures for long late-medieval hose.

Finally, in case you have a vacuum cleaner that seems to have lost some of its initial amazing sucking powers over time? Try cleaning the hose that connects the vacuum to the tube and nozzle. Ours turned out to have accumulated much more clogging dirt stubbornly clinging to the inside of the tube than we would have believed possible...

Monday! Spring! My nose itches! There are links for you!

First of all, Doug's Blogging Archaeology Carnival has ended, and here is the final post.

Secondly, the Canadian Conservation Institute has Notes and Publications downloadable on their server. The Notes are all free (some of them are a bit older, but should still prove helpful), and the Technical Bulletins are available as a free pdf version once they are 5 years or older.

Thirdly and finally, in case you are looking for something small to knit for an unusual recipient, there's always penguin sweaters.