We spent most of yesterday playing life-sized Sokoban in our apartment, sorting through old paper and rearranging books in the shelves. It really is amazing how much paper amasses in just a few years, even when we both try to discard old sheets and slips of whatever paper that are not needed anymore.

There is one exception for me when throwing away paper, though: Any artwork I made myself stays. Period. In some cases, even the preparatory sheets for the final thing.

And in addition to that, I admit I'm a bit reluctant to throw away old bills from computer parts, because I kind of like to rediscover them after some years.
Do you know this feeling of utter amazement (paired with relief that these times are past) when you read what you paid for, say, a 128 MB USB-stick back in the early 2000s or for 128 MB of RAM (simple RAM for a desktop PC) back in 2001? Blimey, those things were expensive! Yet they were needed, and we paid for them.

And now? 50 Euros for a 32 GB USB-Stick. 512 MB sticks given out as freebies on job fairs.
Amazing.

And then I think of the one Gigabyte RAM happily working away in my slightly elderly laptop (and 1 GB is all it will take) and how long some necessary procedures take... and I imagine doing this on 128 MB of RAM because what that cost 2001 is approximately what I paid for my GB in 2006 or 2007.
Impossible.

Oh, by the way, culling old paper or books is so fitting into the medieval calendar. As Got Medieval tells us, February is the month to trim back dead bits from the trees. Paper = made from wood pulp. Therefore paper = trees, dead bits of trees = paper stuff not needed anymore.
(And since there is an archaeologist in this household, and there are small bits of real wood around as well from past projects, we even managed the get-some-firewood part. Neat, huh?)

I'm looking forward to the weekend so much, even if there is housework to be done. The last half of this week somehow dragged its feet instead of rushing by like second halves of weeks usually do for me.

I'm still working on the flyer and on the paper, and don't have time for much else. And after those two, there are already two other things-with-deadline looming overhead. (I'm in need of a writing flash, does anybody have one to spare?) So in case you are looking forward to the next parts of the Kruseler blog post, I'm sorry that I haven't been able to post the follow-up yet. I know what I want to write about, and it will probably be enough for two posts, but I am still lacking the photos needed (and the time and photographer to make them).

It will come up as soon as I can manage, but it will have to wait until both flyer and paper are further along the way. And thank you for your patience.

Today feels just like yesterday work-wise, except that all the things with a deadline that haven't been finished yesterday are one day more urgent today. And since I'm hunting for double files right now (or to be precise, I let a program hunt for them), I can't even do proper work on the computer since all the RAM has been taken already.

And I'm only hunting for the double files to get more space on the external disc so I can do a full back-up before installing updates for two of my programmes. Which I don't really need to do urgently, but wanted to do to have it off my list since I thought it would not take long (and another full backup is never wrong). Speak of efficiency.

No, never mind. Speak of back-ups. I know it hasn't much to do with medieval clothes on the first glance, but when writing my thesis (about archaeological garment finds, which should explain the blog post title), two hard disks died in my computer. Yes, you have read correctly. Two. And the second one was bnly about three months old when it gave up. Since I had one disk dying years before, with less-than-pleasant results, I had grown religious with making backups, so it was not the disaster it might have been - even though the second drive managed to die slowly in such a curious way that it corrupted the most recent backups, costing me about a month of time. Incidentally, I handed in my thesis one month later than I had planned.

With a complete data loss, I would not have finished my thesis by now. In fact, I'm not sure I would have found the heart to do it all over again. Should you be one of those people who are doing it all without a backup copy of your files and a deep belief that you will be the lucky one, please reconsider. Backup media doesn't cost much money nowadays, and it will save you a lot of anxiety and tears (and of course, unnecessary work!) should bad things happen to your hard disk. I'm using a small freeware programme called SyncBack, and I'm content with that, but there are oodles of programmes out there and there's surely the right one for you too, even if you don't like SyncBack.

So please, do yourself and your friends and relations the favor. Do your backups regularly - it doesn't take much time, but boy, can it make a difference!

My new shoes arrived yesterday. Medieval shoes, of course - hand-stitched beauties made to measure on a replica of historical lasts. (Photos may follow once I find the time to make proper ones.) Now I'm almost through with my wardrobe updates for the summer half of the year - one dress remains to be altered a bit.

Otherwise, I am very well occupied with design and typography of my brochure, preparing for the conference in May and doing a myriad of other small things besides - so I have nothing really interesting or new to blog about. At least there is progress being made in all those areas.

I've just re-ordered the gadgets and finally managed to substitute the blogroll (that can't be divided into parts with different titles) with link lists. You can now see whether it is a writing & publishing themed blog or a medievalist blog that you are about to click, should you be willing to leave this blog via another one.

In case you wonder why I have this type of blogs on my reading list:
I stumbled over most of them when I was preparing the book proposal for my thesis. I had tried before to get my master's thesis to a publisher, and luckily I made all the beginner's mistakes then, and not this time around.

Having grown not only older and bolder, but a bit wiser at the same time, I read a lot of how-to texts and do-and-don't-lists before sending anything out. And while doing this, I found a few blogs that had helpful advice and nicely written texts. Since I enjoy reading nicely written texts, I stuck around.

And while I'm writing about the book biz:
One of my favourite funnies about the business is a video by Jackson A. Pearce, where she shows how she once imagined the writing and publishing process. It's wonderful. I watch it regularly to have the good feeling that I am not the only person who once had a much too optimistic view about the publishing business - and that I am in good company indeed.
Here you go - enjoy!

This is the sewing project I finished Friday, a sideless surcot. It had been on my list for ages.
I finally started sewing it this winter, with high hopes of keeping warmer next year during the colder parts of the season.

Cut and proportions are based on the garments from Burgos de las Huelgas, in Spain. Unfortunately, I am too poor to afford handwoven silk brocade in bright colours with arabian characters brocaded into a broad strip on the fabric, or something similar.
Thus it is made from blue wool twill, sewn with linen thread, and the upper part is lined with rabbit fur (there was rabbit fur lining found with one of the royal surcots, though, so this at least is similar material).
Should this prove not warm enough, I will add in more fur, but for the moment, I am quite content.


Since I dragged the unfinished piece around folded together, it still has some creases that will gradually hang out. And, of course, there's still lots of rabbit fur clinging to the fabric. But all that is left to do is shake out the garment and brush it down once, and then maybe hang it into the damp bathroom for a few hours to smoothe the creases... and so I can tackle the next thing on my craft projects list.

Which is? Let's call it "simple precision tablet weaving" for now.

The end of last week was very successful sewing-wise for me, since I managed to get a lot of work done on two projects. Number one was the pair of mittens, lined with rabbit fur, to keep my fingers from freezing.

Those were roughly orientated on the pieces from Mühlberg, but no copies or reproductions. I used blue wool twill and rabbit fur. Since I have very small hands, one single rabbit fur, of normal size, was just enough for the pair of mittens.

I made the fur lining first, stitching it together from smaller bits where necessary. I worked from an outline of the hand and with forming a piece of fur around the thumb for the difficult bits. It is no perfect fit nor a good-looking pattern of fur bits, but as this is only the lining, I spent no time on making it look nice.



The wool covering for the mittens was again traced out on the fabric, cut and stitched together with a very simple thumb set into a slit at the appropriate place. It is a tight fit over the leather, just as I intended.


The mittens were wearable just before the weather got warmer again - from -17°C to more than 3°C. They do a wonderful job in keeping my fingers snug and warm, even the thumb in its single compartment.

Making them took several hours, mostly due to the fact that I was a) not aiming for speed, but instead trying them on often to enjoy the soft fur and the warmth, b) taking my time to find out how I could best use the fur and not waste anything, c) not having worked with fur for quite a while, d) stitching small pieces together around the heel of the hand and the thumb (think jigsaw here).