If you're interested in inks or ink corrosion, there's a conference planned about just that topic - ink corrosion - in October 2019, on the 24th and 25th. Right after this conference, there's a three-day workshop (October 25-27) on making and using historical inks.
The webpage OpenEdition offers a number of open source books and articles from the humanities and social sciences. The website, for me, shows up as an odd mix of German, French, and English, but it seems to be natively French, and a high percentage of the texts are french. (Try searching for "quenouille" instead of "spindle", for instance.)
There's an old Egyptian rug that is made from cat hair.
And while we're at the topic of animals - the Rare Breeds Survival Trust has published the current watchlist with endangered rare breeds in Britain. There's quite a number of sheep on the list - so if you're in Britain and thinking about keeping some sheep... (or horses, or poultry...)