If you are a tiny little bit into typography, you will have heard of a font called Comic Sans.


If there's debate about only one font out there, it's surely about this one. Personally, I can't understand why some people hate it so much (and yes, I have used it - it is a font that is easy to read for me in bad lighting, which is the reason why I once chose it for song lyrics to print out).

And it looks as if I'm not alone in not understanding the hate: Project Comic Sans is taking the font to re-write well-known logos and symbols. Do check it out, it is not only funny - it also shows how much fonts are perceived as part of a logo even if you are not aware of it.

As promised yesterday, here are a few things that might be of interest.

First of all, there's a blog out there with (among other things) a collection of 60 pdf files with papers or articles on experimental archaeology. Go visit http://experimentalarchaeology.wordpress.com/papers/ if you are curious now - and enjoy!

And there's more nice stuff on the net. Quite recently, the Historisch Centrum Overijssel has made all the back issues of the Textielhistorische Bijdragen available online.  This is lovely! Even more lovely is that Isis of Medieval Silkwork has made a selection of all the articles of interest for the late medieval and early modern period, with links. And if you don't know her blog yet, this is a good opportunity to check it out as well.


And another article has gone online: Fragmenter av kvinnedrakter fra vikingtiden –Metode for identifikassjon av gamle tekstilfunn. This is a Norwegian article with a short English summary, available via Bergen University as pdf file. The paper is about textiles from three Viking Age graves owned by Bergen Museum. They were analysed and evaluated using reconstructed micro-stratigraphy (reconstructed because the textiles had been separated from the metal objects in the past).

In more personal news, the collection of addresses of people interested in getting my book in English has started out extremely well, and I am very happy about all the feedback I have gotten both in emails and comments here on the blog. Thank you all very much for your support, and please keep spreading the word by email, facebook, twitter, your blog, forums you frequent - I would love to have a truly impressive list when I check back with the publishing house in two weeks.

First of all, to all of you who have signed on to the infoletter, or passed on the information and the link: Thank you! I am really, really happy to get this much response and support on my quest for numbers. A lot of time and effort went into writing the thesis, and it feels enormously good to see that other people are interested in this work, and willing to pay for a book about it.

Also my thanks to you who left comments with suggestions about the publishing procedure and alternatives.

Should you be interested in the German version, this is available through all the usual ways to get hold of a German book - either from a distributor in your country, or from a German shop. You can also order it from my webshop, which is probably attractive if you think about getting some textile tools or supplies at the same time.

Personally, I must admit that the e-book has never gotten me onto its side - I just prefer a bunch of printed and bound paper. I do, however, know how helpful an e-book can be, and I will think about this both for the German and the English version. It is, however, not the first option for the English version.


And regarding the voices who recommend self-publishing or print on demand... thank you for helping me think out of the box. Unfortunately, several reasons speak against using a pod service for this book - and not the least of those are your finances.
A publishing house puts out money for a book to finance an appropriately-sized print run. But they also handle law questions, distribution channels, advertisement, review copies, layouting, proofreading and editing, and thousands of other pesky details. Yes, it would technically be possible to do a pod run and "cut out the publishing house" - but we are talking about a 400-500 page book here, with colour pictures at least for parts of the book. This means it either needs to be all black and white, or it's unaffordable. And while the publishing house also needs to make some money (back) from the book, using its distribution channels and structures also means that a lot of things will be cheaper than if I tried to get it via POD.

There are books perfectly suited to using Lulu or some similar service, but my thesis is not one of them: I did the calculations and all the maths for the German version, and trust me... you do not really want me to go pod with this. It would cost you much more than if I'm going with a publishing house.

As you probably all know, I am working on getting my book, "Kleidung im Mittelalter", published in the English version.

I have found a publishing house that is very interested in the book, but they are unsure whether there would be enough interest in the book, and thus enough buyers, to make it worth their while (and their investment). With the translation costs and costs of print and binding, especially since it includes colour pictures, a book like this is not easy to calculate.

When I was at this stage for the German version, I set up a newsletter list for people interested in the book. This did work very well for everybody, so I am doing it again. If you subscribe using this form, I will keep you informed about any developments on the publishing front, and if there should be any special offers or subscriptions possible, it will make sure you hear of this. On the other hand, your name on the list and your input about pricing will make it easier for the publishing house (and me, of course) to gauge interest in the book.

The German version has 529 pages and more than 400 illustrations, some of them in colour. It features information about sewing techniques, textile techniques, how to critically look at sources for garment research, the development of medieval clothing, a reconstructed technique for tailoring historical garments and - last but of course not least - a catalogue of still extant medieval garments and garment fragments from 500 to 1500.

So if you are waiting for the English version of my book, please subscribe - and please pass on the information about this!

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There are times when I am going "oh, sure, we can do that!" and then, much later, this harmless little phrase comes back and bites me in the butt.

Like it did in regard to the introduction article for the Textile Forum proceedings book which is under construction at the moment (I've been told that most of the contributors are writing furiously these days, just like me). Yes, of course Sabine and I can write an intro about the Forum - why it is what it is, what the idea behind it was, how it is supposed to work.

And somehow this little article, only intended as a short intro, is now developing a life of its own. Dragging me off into side aspects and luring my mind away to think about how much of a craft process series one single crafter should know, or should need to master. After all, there's lots and lots of work and skill involved in seemingly simple things, like a cheeseburger or a pencil. (If you're only going to click one of these links - click the pencil one.)

So here I am, pondering things... and expanding the little intro article a way beyond what it was originally intended to be.

And you know what? I like that.

Books are just like pictures. They are lovely to have, wonderful to peruse, and a pain to organise. And it's immensely helpful to organise them - having keywords and tags to search pictures, and having keywords and notes to check whether a book was helpful or not. Plus a bibliography programme can help with citations - and save a major pain when writing.

There are several programmes on the market, the two best-known of which are probably Zotero (a free plug-in for Firefox) and Endnote (a commercial stand-alone programme).

Just recently, I have re-assessed Zotero as a possible alternative to my usual bibliography programme (which is Endnote). There are pros and cons for each of these two programmes, but one of the best comparisons I have found yet is this one from profhacker. So, even though my version of Endnote is quite a few years old now already - from how everything in Endnote is integrated in my workflow, I'll stay with it.

If you do not have a bibliography programme yet or are not totally content with yours, though, you might want to check out Zotero. After all, it's free - so it can't hurt to try.

If you have been writing stuff, chances are high that you have had your experience of writer's block. It's unfortunately a quite common thing, and that is on the other hand quite nice - because everyone suffering from it can do so in the firm knowledge that he or she is not alone.

Now there's gazillions of websites and many books telling you what you can do when you have it, how to get rid of it, how to find new ways to cope with it, and so on. But I just found out that there is also... an event about it.

Louisville, Kentucky, has actually held a Writer's Block Festival. That's... unexpected. Really.