There's been a sensational find done in Italy: A church burial place where an entire community of people was buried in a church crypt - and a lot of them mummyfied. Which means that they are still fully dressed in their burial garments - practical, no-nonsense clothes.

You can read and see pictures about this find from the Italian mountain church here. Go have a look - the pics are spectacular!

As my departure to Leeds IMC is creeping closer and closer, I checked back on Jonathan Jarrett's blog about the Blogger meetup. And true to his word, he and Magistra from the magistraetmater blog have decided on a time and place: It will be Tuesday evening, 18 to 20 o'clock, at the Stables pub.

Here's the full article on Jonathan's blog, where you can find a picture of him for identification. I'll be there, too - so maybe we meet at Leeds?

It has taken ages and the development of a severely bad conscience on my side, but it's finally done and (almost) finished: The new webpages of www.pallia.net are up and running.

Ah. Finally.

Of course there were a few glitches, and the very last pages are not yet online, but the bulk of the work is done, including burying my arms up to the elbows in the innards of .css-files (something I have never wanted to do), brushing up my html-skills to get things to behave properly, and learning how to install webshop software on a server.

Well, the very last thing is still a work in progress, so it will take a while longer before you will be able to browse a shining new online market stall, and I'm sorry for the further delay - but those things are never as easily done as said. Meanwhile, why don't you hop over to the shining new website (now also available in English) and tell me how you like it?

Of course the tax stuff was not finished without one or two revisions and double-checkings, and of course that took longer than expected.

And getting the book-keeping up to its current state also took a while - but I have finally found a few web resources that really helped me to understand some of the stuff I had just muddled through before. So, for those of you who are German and need to get some basic knowledge about how to do the books, I can recommend the introduction into bookkeeping offered by Collmex (which is software to do the stuff - not the software I use, but the booking processes are the same regardless of programme) and, for any additional questions, there's a forum called Rechnungswesenforum, where a lot of knowledgeable people hang out and are willing to help.

So while I did (of course) not get all of the stuff done that I wanted to get done yesterday, I learned a few things about the book wrangling that were really helpful - and will probably make life (and bookkeeping) easier in the future. Whew.

It is almost the end of May, which means that the deadline for German taxes is approaching - and that, in turn, means I am doing what all good Germans are doing now... which would be re-checking the bookkeeping, making final calculations, and filling out tax forms with all the maths that is involved with that.

And while I am here and happy that there are programmes to help me doing all the maths and calculations and listing and whatnot that needs to be done, in case you want something else to look at, here's a list of stuff that I wanted to pass on to you, accumulated during the last few days when things were busy here:



Textile History, Journal of the Pasold Research Fund Ltd' has digitized all back issues. You can find the contents of each issue at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/tex. There's also a free issue to look through (one from 2009) as well as a cumulative index. (h/t to MEDTC-list)

There's a conference "Developments in Dress History" planned for December 8-10 2011 in the University of Brighton, UK; the Call for Papers is open until August 1. You find more info about the conference and the full CfP here.

The Euregio Maas-Rhine has a project about the historical wool fabrication up and running - it's called the Wollroute (wool route). They have made videos to show the historic production places and tell some background info - in German, Dutch or French. If you don't understand any of these three, you will at least have nice pictures of wool and looms, so do check out their website www.wollroute.net.


Yale has made their digital collection available online, and it's free! They announced an Open Access policy this May, and now you can browse what they have via Discover Yale Digital Commons. (They have spindle whorls. And lots more.)


And finally... Crowd Funding has found its entrance into archaeology. A group of German students wants to try and make a T-shaped stone pillar, as it was used at Göbekli Tepe more than 11000 years ago. The pillar will be about 5 m high, 35 t heavy, and will be worked with only the materials and tools available back then. They have already done their preliminary experiments, and now they are looking to raise money for the real project this summer. The fundraising is done via mySherpa, a German-language site (and the project description is all German) - if you are interested in the project (or better still wish to support it), you can find their mySherpa site here. (In contrast to kickstarter.com, mySherpa requires you to pay upfront as soon as you declare your sponsorship; in case of underfunding of the project, they wire your money back.)


Go have fun with these links!

I'm being very lazy today, and I'll just point you to a very interesting article over on the Abby's Yarns blog about the debate whether the hand spindle or the spinning wheel is the better tool for spinning.

Abby comes from the Andes, and she learned how to use a low-whorl hand spindle for production spinning. Do read her article - it's  a really, really good one.

The moment has come - textile folks rejoice! Cathy stumbled across a new downloadable .pdf-publication on the Archaeology of York webpage, and this time, it's Textile Production at 16-22 Coppergate by Penelope Walton Rogers. That book has been out of print for a good while, and I dimly remember checking its price once, years back, and deciding it was way too pricey for my student's budget.

Now it's available for free download! You will find the download page behind this link. Enjoy!

And now I'm returning you to your regularly scheduled reminder post...
It's May already, and the deadline for the Textile Forum is drawing closer.

So please do not forget to register if you would like to attend this year's European Textile Forum in Asparn an der Zaya, Austria. We are going to focus on linen and other vegetable fibres, and it does promise to be very, very interesting!