The Book has been out for about half a year now, and it's doing very well - and I have not forgotten all those comments and questions that I receive about an English version. So I've done some planning and scheming and thinking and prep work, and now it's time to find either an agent willing to peddle the book on the Europe/US market or a publishing house, preferably with distribution on both sides of the Big Pond.

And here I sit, now, with my not-so-great knowledge of English-language-based publishing houses and agents. So I'll do what probably every blogger does sooner or later: I write a bleg.

I am looking for a possibility to bring my book to the English language market. It's a book geared to please both the scientists (art historians, archaeologists, textile conservators) and the Living History activists, offering the first general overview of still extant medieval garments plus all the background knowledge needed to re-create garments using a reconstructed historical tailoring technique. The German version is doing very well and has been getting rave reviews from scientists and Living History folks alike.
If you know an agent or publishing house that might be interested in this book, please give me a hint - I'd be delighted to have a few more leads than I have at the moment!

This weekend, an e-mail with a research-related question fluttered into my inbox:

Some months ago, I was doing websearch on nalbinding and ran across a blog entry about ancient scrivner tools that actually may have been misidentified nalbinding needles.

Unfortunately, the author of the mail can't find it anymore and thus asked if it might have been on my blog. Where it is not (or at least I can't remember writing it at all, which usually means I never did write it). But the Internet is large and full of knowledge - any of you know this article and maybe even where it is?

And while I'm blegging: Recently, historical spools and bobbins for thread have come up again and again as a topic, and I remember that I had already taken one foray into the library to look for some more examples - but these little buggers seem to be hard to find. The one that is cited (and reproduced) most often is the spool from London, and I know that there are some thread spools, including simple reed cutoffs, in the finds from Kempten. But apart from that? There's only little mention of "possible bobbins" or so in most of the publications that readily come to mind. Have I missed the compendium of thread spools and bobbins? Or is there really so little of these small helpful things out there?

I find it amazing again and again - the things that can happen if you hop around on the internet.

Yesterday night, we laughed about a pun involving the Krebs Cycle (citric acid cycle). Then - by looking that one up in Wikipedia - we stumbled over a page that lists biochemistry songs. Folks! Biochemistry songs! With lyrics detailing how the Krebs cycle goes, or the respiratory cycle, or whatever! Can it get geekier than that? I wrote a few filks in my life, but I never thought of doing a science-y songtext.

Needless to say, we went to bed far later than intended. Go waste your time too: Here's the site we found yesterday, and here's a link page to lots of other science songs.
And while I'm at it, if you are planning to write a murder mystery book, here's a hint from author Parnell Hall, also wrapped in a song. With gruesome pics.

Somehow those weekends are just swooooshing these times - I can't believe it is already Monday again!

At least my energy level feels quite a bit higher than it was on Friday, so I'll see how much I can get done today. And in case you are actually looking for a little textile content while I am busily pottering away at boring office stuff and doing some proofreading and preparing some stuff for markets, take a look at the instructions behind this link, which goes to Hsifengs livejournal and where she describes how to get at most of the presentations given at the "Costume Colloquium: A Tribute To Janet Arnold" in 2008 in Florence, Italy.

Now that's a wonderful idea, I think!

I feel like I need an energy boost - somehow I'm still tired even though I slept long enough. At least it's Friday, which means that the week is about over.

But before I kick myself in the behind, go brew myself a pot of (hopefully energy-boosting) tea and settle down to some more work before the weekend, here's a totally non-medieval and non-textile but very funny link for you:

So much Pun.

As the title hints (who'd have thought?), it is a website with puns - including photos. So if you have a thing for weird jokes with language, go check it out. This page regularly makes both of us here utter the typical "I-just-got-that-one"-groan - they are that good (or with puns, is that bad?)

Easter is approaching, and with perfect timing, the daffodils in our garden, kindly left as bulbs by the previous tenants, are blooming. (It's perfect timing because the German name for daffodil is Osterglocke, literally translation: "Easter Bell".) Easter also means that I will not be blogging tomorrow or on Monday.

But before I disappear into the extra-long weekend, here is a link that was announced on a textile-focused list today:

The Ohio State University has initiated a database project to help with the identification of fibres, providing microscope pictures of different kinds of fibres. The Fiber Reference Image Library, as it is called, is intended to serve as a reference library, as the name already says, but also as a teaching tool and information base. If you always wanted to take a really close look at cotton, wool or (my favourite pic) jute fibres, have a look at the database at https://fril.osu.edu!

After the weekend, I hope to have good progress news and pics not only regarding the tent, but also the portioned and packaged gold thread and maybe even the knitting project. And that probably means I should get busy now and stop browsing fibre pictures!

This little blog of mine has gained enough importance to slowly become a target for spammers, it seems. Because spam-type comments have turned up only very seldom in the past, I have never voiced any spam-comment policy, but I feel that it is time now to do so.

If you have tried to comment on an older post, you will have found that comment moderation is enabled. Fresh posts can be commented on without moderation (pun intended), but screening comments makes it easier for me to nip a multi-post comment spam attack in the bud (there were about two of these already, and cleaning them up takes time and gets on my nerves in a major way).

As to the rest... I feel that freedom of speech is an important thing, and I also think that the internet is a very good and very valuable platform to say (write, that is) what you mean, feel, and think. However, I also feel that a blog post and its comments are something like a conversation between blog author and commenters, and if I'm standing around in real life chatting with a bunch of people about, say, ice cream flavours and discussing their impact on the environment and somebody suddenly starts to praise an ice cream factory that is known to mine the last glaciers, grand-style, for ice, or suddenly intrudes on the conversation with a speech about how we should all convert to the Church of the Holy Spaghetti Monster and dress up like pirates AT ONCE... I would feel quite pissed off.

And since these spammers are just delivering their bit and turn away again at once, it isn't even possible to start discussing them into the ground about how mining these last glaciers is the worst thing ever, and so on.

So here's the official comment policy: Comments are more than welcome, whether they agree with me or disagree with me, as long as there is some connection to the blog post they belong to. Unsolicited advice on what, where or how to buy something, product placement including unrelated blog or website placements*, buy-here links and other spam-type comments whether religious or not, will be deleted from my blog. Abusive comments may also be deleted. Comments are moderated for older posts to screen out the bad eggs before they turn up, saving you from disappointment after you click to see the new comment.

That's it. Now... comments, anyone?

* Pointing out a website or blog that is related to the topic of the blog post, or to the general topic of the blog is very welcome, of course!