Nicely in tune with my wool spinning blog post yesterday, there's a link to an article on medievalists.net today - about medieval sheep farming.

I've only taken a short look at it yet, but it promises to be a very interesting read - a report based on data from pipe rolls:

The Winchester pipe rolls provide sufficient data to allow an examination of five areas of policy associated with medieval sheep farming. These are the provision of sires; the construction and maintenance of sheepcotes; the supply of feed to the sheep; the supply of medicaments and veterinary expertise; and the supply of labour devoted to the care and well-being of the flock.

(p. 140).

If you're interested, here's the medievalists.net page with the link to the .pdf file. The article is by Mark Page, published in Agricultural History Review 51:2 (2003), and called The Technology of sheep farming: some evidence from Crawley, Hampshire, 1208-1349.

I spent most of the workday yesterday getting back on track with the website relaunch that I had prepared for oh, ages ago - new design, new texts, full German and English version. And then it had taken a backseat (think extralong passenger train backseat here) to all the other things going on.

The good news is: I had some nice progress yesterday. And the bad news... there's still a good heap of work to be done on it.

And now to the randomness part, because if I don't write all those random things here and now, I'll have forgotten about them on Monday.
My IMC Leeds programme arrived - and I was really wondering what I would be getting from the UK in book format. Goodness, it's huge! I already knew the conference was gigantic, but a full book just to list the sessions and papers? That really is a little overwhelming. And since I'm a fan of whelm and sometimes even overwhelm, I'm so looking forward to this thing!

It's really getting summery outside, and there's a few patches in the garden that need some urgent de-weeding. But the rest all does fine - we'll have a lot more of the good mint this year than last year, the first tulips (two real and a lot of small wild ones) are already in bloom, and my little tomato seedlings are also coming along very nicely.

The Spinning Experiment Results article is almost finished and sent off to colleagues to give it a read-through - so I'm happily waiting for their feedback now.

And some of you probably remember my post about the medieval underwear from Lengberg a good while ago - there's now been a little TV snippet about it. It will stay online for a few more days on the ORF page. The snippet you want is titled "Tiroler Tanga". The plugin doesn't work for me, unfortunately, so go enjoy it for me!

Update: There's a little arrow on the top right of the video frame - click on that to view it with an external player (windows media player or the like). That will work even if the plugin doesn't.

While I'm getting back on track of work to do after taking yesterday as a day off - things like putting the workshop teaching stuff from the car back inside and where it belongs, writing emails and working a bit on all those other projects that want attention - here's a nice little video with typography that I, you know, thought you might like?


Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

I hope you enjoy it!

Or, if you prefer to have something with more archeological content, you can watch the videos about the Staffordshire Hoard conservation works, posted by the Birmingham museum. Here's the first one of their five videos (they have their own youtube channel).

While I am finishing up stuff here and packing together all the stuff I am going to need during the weekend, I will just toss you a link to the V&A page about embroidery - just in case you don't know it yet.

It is here, complete with a little database of the embroidered objects they have. And I  stumbled across another thing on the V&A site: They have a youtube channel where you can watch videos about restauration and conservation work - or other informative videos. Like the stunning work for the Champlevé enamel. Do go spend some time there (so that I did not get stuck there alone)!

There's a whole page up since today at medievalists.net about the topic of Medieval Dress - with a nice list of textile- and dress-related online articles. The topic is not restricted to dress or clothing only, but also extends to dress accessories like pins, brooches and jewellery.

There are quite a few articles in that list I'll have to take at least a look at, and it's really nice to see a paper about wall hangings. If you are not of the textile persuasion already and want to have a nice overview of archaeological textiles and the problems of this field, you might want to read the article by Maria Cybulska and Jerzy Maik.

I'm one of those people who have the deep-seated wish to do everything correctly... so among the other things, I'm still working on getting my head wrapped around all the things that I have to be aware of in the future, tax-wise, and there's not every thing really clear for me yet.

However, I found some really interesting stuff around on the net, and even though most of you readers are not from Germany, I'll still share it. There's a totally amazing guide for freelancers called mediafon, and not only does it answer about every question that might come up, it's also written in a way that makes reading up on the stuff fun. And if you know how German law texts are written (probably the same for all law texts in every language), that really is an achievement. So between that and a call to my friendly official in charge, I'll probably be quite ok.

In other news (and I'm sorry again for the non-Germans), you might remember that back in June, I had a film team here and an insane amount of fun working with them. Well, the film is now finally not only cut and edited (has been for a while), but also furnished with an airing date. It will run under the title "Ritter, Gaukler, Heilerinnen (Faszination Mittelalter)" on BR alpha on the 28th of March, 16:00 to 16:30 o'clock. It's not up on their programme preview site yet, but will be in time.

A few days ago, Merriam Webster had "togs" as word of the day, and I got sent the link. Word of the Day is quite fun to read, and if you are looking to improve your English vocabulary, it might not be a bad thing to just take a look at it now and then (or daily, even).

If you would like to read the "togs"-WotD, go here. But be warned: There's word games and stuff on that site, it can act as a time sink...