I have a gazillion of browser tabs open, and that needs to change. So I'm going to give you a gazillion of links!

First of all, Franklin Habit has mashed Victorian knitting into an entirely non-Victorian baby hat that is definitely worth a look for its mohawk fringe. (Victorian, of course.)

Gamergate is still not dead - but you can auto-block them on Twitter. Here's an interesting article about that (which also explains what "sealioning" means).

If you need to insult someone, here is a much cooler way to do it (and much more long-lasting): Names for plants and creatures.

Having too much stuff in your house can be a problem - but one that you can tackle by getting rid of things you don't use anymore. Running out of storage space for archaeological finds? Much worse, and much harder to solve.

An article about recreating a Roman hairstyle is open access online at the EXARC journal.

If you are in Germany and would like to go to a creativity retreat, there is a project up on Startnext called Hand-Herz-Seele. Margit from Alte Künste (my partner-in-crime from the LonCon last year) is one of the teachers there, so you might get a chance to dye with her. The project is currently collecting "likes" to be able to start the actual funding stage.

Speaking of dyes and colours, Ask the Past tells us how to dress a child. Now that's still the proper way around there - blue for girls and pink for boys. As it should be. (Someone got it wrong some time after 1890...)

One of the things that keep me absolutely fascinated with the Middle Ages and medieval stuff is the constant discovery of new things. Well, new to me. New aspects, new interpretations, new discoveries, new finds - our image of medieval life is continuously growing, evolving, changing.

Case in point: These two blog posts by Erik Kwakkel. The first one is about transportation covers for medieval books, ranging from binding as a girdle book to boxes and satchels. Girdle books are probably quite well-known, but I had not seen the diverse satchels before... which would also be nice to take closer looks at to see how their construction is, and how they were sewn.

The second one is about cracking codes - the code that typography is, and the codes of abbreviation.  Did you know that there was a medieval form of shorthand? Or that there is a script that is actually called "littera inintelligibilis" - indecipherable?

It's probably a good thing that our book had a deadline - it would be just too easy to go on adding more and more things. The Middle Ages, after all, are long and large and full of interesting things!

Here I am, late-blogging again. This time, though, I have more than my own feeble words for you - there is a link. The Kent Archaeological Society has a journal called Archaeologia Cantiana, existing since 1858, and it's online, with many, many .pdf articles that might be of interest to you.

It covers a huge variety of topics, from architecture to Kentish dialect in the late Middle Ages to wall paintings and coinage. Check it out. I'm sure you will find at least one article that will interest you!

It's been almost two years since I stumbled across HabitRPG, and I'm still using it. In fact, I'm using it daily. I can't believe it's been this long, and I am often amazed at the difference it makes in my life.

Case in point? Stressful times (like having an editing deadline) usually meant that a lot of the smaller, mundane things fell by the wayside. This includes things like getting some breakfast, or lunch, or putting away used dishes. It also meant long streaks of inactivity on maintenance tasks - getting the picture database up to date, for example, or remembering to defragment the HDD.

Chances of that happening have actually much, much diminished thanks to the "Dailies" column in Habit. Basically, I have a list of those recurring tasks that come up each week, and some of them each day - and they remind me to get my shit together and to get stuff done. For a lot of these smaller dailies, it means a frantic burst of activity towards the evening, but I won't complain about my timing here: they get done, and that is what counts.

For me, it serves as a tool to keep track of things I have to do, helps to motivate me when necessary, and helps me to structure my day. It's not always perfect, but it works very well for me, and it comes with a friendly community and is still growing new and useful features.

I've tried to infect a few of our friends with the Habit virus, more or less successfully so - it's not the perfect to-do list for everybody, or so it seems. I love it, though. (In case you have tried it out - tell me what you think about it in the comments! I'd be very, very interested to hear what you think.)

I'm planning to spend a large chunk of my time today on proofreading - the book has been printed, and I am wielding my Red Pen of Doom and am marking it up. It is always amazing and slightly (or more than slightly) frightening how much of a difference the printout makes. I can proofread someone else's article okay on a screen, but with my own writing or with longer things, nothing can beat a printout and the old-fashioned pen.

While I am reading, you might want to have some words to look at, too. So here are links to provide you with fodder:

First of all, 2015 is the anniversary of the English Magna Carta - and the surviving four copies have actually met for the first time ever. Here's a blog post about their meeting. (And about them.)

Isis at Medieval Silkwork writes about ground fabrics for embroidery. (Those that I know are mostly linen, by the way, with a very few silk ones thrown in. And I've found out that if you are doing counted work, there's a limit to how unbalanced a fabric can be to still have a nice-looking embroidery - distortion, anyone?)

More reading? As in book form reading? Here you go.

Penelope Walton Rogers has her own press now, Pangur Press, and she's starting off with free .pdf versions of some of her earlier publications - including the two volumes from York about textiles and textile production.

There you go. Have fun reading!

I've reviewed my facebook privacy settings this morning. They are not very private, since I use facebook mostly job-related - but it never hurts to check them now and then anyways. So everything was fine. And then I clicked my way through the other possible things in that settings part of FB... and made a discovery.

If you don't like facebook (or others) tracking where you go and what you look at to serve you ads based on that, you can actually opt out of this. It doesn't mean you won't get ads anymore (you will), but the ads are not based on your data. Sounds like a good idea to me!

The site is called http://www.youronlinechoices.com/ - just in case you'd like to opt out, too...

If you've heard one of my presentations about Experimental Archaeology, the chances are high that you have also heard me talk about what defines an archaeological experiment. ExpArch has become a buzzword in recent years, and the term has often been applied to things that are not real experimental archaeology - because it seems to sell well, or excite people, or those doing the description don't know better, or for whatever other reason(s).

Experiments in general are very clearly defined: They are a process that is designed specifically to answer a question. The experiment design has a very great influence on how much of an answer you get, and on how general the answer can be - if you are doing a chemical experiment with, say, helium, you cannot tell things about what would happen with oxygen, or hydrogen in place of the helium.

Experiments, to be called such, also have to be documented clearly, accurately and objectively enough to allow the experiment to be repeated - and the outcome, if things are done correctly in each instance of the experiment, should be the same or at least very similar. This means anybody can, theoretically, replicate a given published experiment to test the reliability of the experiment itself and the answers it gave.

Which means that a proper archaeological experiment needs to be objective, it has to be repeatable, has to be designed to answer a specific question, and the design of the actual process has to be suitable for this  answer - you cannot say something about oak working if you used beech, and you cannot say something about the suitability of old tools if you use modern ones. It also has to be documented accordingly. Everything else is not archaeological experiments - it can be tests of tools and techniques, or archaeotechnic, or playing around, or making replicas, but it's not an experiment.

Now, very obviously, as soon as you go into archaeology, things get a little messier than in a nice, clean chemistry lab or physics facility, where you have controlled environments, controlled substances, and measurable outcomes.

The materials for archaeological experiments are very often natural stuff - and there can be a huge difference between wood and wood, even if it's the same tree species. Plus there's the human factor - craft skills are an important factor, and they are hard to quantify. Many things are also subjective, such as the preference of one style of working over another, or one tool variant over another. Which means that "objective" will, in various instances, turn into "as objective as possible" and "repeatable" into "as repeatable as possible" - since you cannot use the same tree twice. (In some cases, modern stand-in materials can be used to get better repeatability. I've learned about experiments about flint-knapping, for instance, that use specifically made ceramic cores for knapping: similar characteristics for the breaking, and uniform without flaws.)

One of the key things to still get workable results is... documentation. There's no such thing as too much documentation! This is especially important when human factors come into play. It's also important to keep in mind that these human influences may be very significant, and to document (and describe, and publish) accordingly. Even if it's not a proper, full-fledged archaeological experiment, but someone or a group trying out techniques, good documentation of the tests can make a world of a difference when you are trying to make sense of things - or just trying to get an inkling about a single person's skill development.

A very good example of documentation for this can be found on Agata Ulanowska's site. She's lecturing in Warsaw and has been giving courses about old textile techniques for several years, teaching students how to do things like tablet-weaving. For those courses, she's giving out documentation sheets, making it possible to track the progress of each student as well as getting an overview about times for designing, weaving, and finishing projects. The sheets are downloadable from her page (scroll down to find them) - maybe they will be helpful for you as well!