We now interrupt our regular programme for a completely unscheduled and unexpected "Hooray!"

Yesterday, I received an e-mail telling me this little blog here has made it to a Top-50-List which you can find here - it's called  50 best blogs for Medieval History Geeks. And I was totally stunned and amazed to be in one list with the Great Ones of Medieval blogging, like the Medieval Material Culture Blog, Got Medieval, Unlocked Wordhoard and many more.

If you don't know the other blogs on the list, do go check them out (that's time well spent) while I am here, feeling totally cool because I've actually been listed in a Best-Of-List. Hooray!

The Internet holds many surprises, and one of them is a searchable database associated with the book "Cloth and Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England, AD 450-700" (2007) by Penelope Walton
Rogers: http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/archive/clothing_eh_2007/index.cfm

This covers the period AD 450-700 and includes 3802 records of textiles from 162 Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, searchable by using drop-down menus. I have only taken a very short look at it, and it will probably be most useful if you own the book the database goes with, but it might come in handy anyways...

The Book has been out for about half a year now, and it's doing very well - and I have not forgotten all those comments and questions that I receive about an English version. So I've done some planning and scheming and thinking and prep work, and now it's time to find either an agent willing to peddle the book on the Europe/US market or a publishing house, preferably with distribution on both sides of the Big Pond.

And here I sit, now, with my not-so-great knowledge of English-language-based publishing houses and agents. So I'll do what probably every blogger does sooner or later: I write a bleg.

I am looking for a possibility to bring my book to the English language market. It's a book geared to please both the scientists (art historians, archaeologists, textile conservators) and the Living History activists, offering the first general overview of still extant medieval garments plus all the background knowledge needed to re-create garments using a reconstructed historical tailoring technique. The German version is doing very well and has been getting rave reviews from scientists and Living History folks alike.
If you know an agent or publishing house that might be interested in this book, please give me a hint - I'd be delighted to have a few more leads than I have at the moment!

This weekend, an e-mail with a research-related question fluttered into my inbox:

Some months ago, I was doing websearch on nalbinding and ran across a blog entry about ancient scrivner tools that actually may have been misidentified nalbinding needles.

Unfortunately, the author of the mail can't find it anymore and thus asked if it might have been on my blog. Where it is not (or at least I can't remember writing it at all, which usually means I never did write it). But the Internet is large and full of knowledge - any of you know this article and maybe even where it is?

And while I'm blegging: Recently, historical spools and bobbins for thread have come up again and again as a topic, and I remember that I had already taken one foray into the library to look for some more examples - but these little buggers seem to be hard to find. The one that is cited (and reproduced) most often is the spool from London, and I know that there are some thread spools, including simple reed cutoffs, in the finds from Kempten. But apart from that? There's only little mention of "possible bobbins" or so in most of the publications that readily come to mind. Have I missed the compendium of thread spools and bobbins? Or is there really so little of these small helpful things out there?

I find it amazing again and again - the things that can happen if you hop around on the internet.

Yesterday night, we laughed about a pun involving the Krebs Cycle (citric acid cycle). Then - by looking that one up in Wikipedia - we stumbled over a page that lists biochemistry songs. Folks! Biochemistry songs! With lyrics detailing how the Krebs cycle goes, or the respiratory cycle, or whatever! Can it get geekier than that? I wrote a few filks in my life, but I never thought of doing a science-y songtext.

Needless to say, we went to bed far later than intended. Go waste your time too: Here's the site we found yesterday, and here's a link page to lots of other science songs.
And while I'm at it, if you are planning to write a murder mystery book, here's a hint from author Parnell Hall, also wrapped in a song. With gruesome pics.

Somehow those weekends are just swooooshing these times - I can't believe it is already Monday again!

At least my energy level feels quite a bit higher than it was on Friday, so I'll see how much I can get done today. And in case you are actually looking for a little textile content while I am busily pottering away at boring office stuff and doing some proofreading and preparing some stuff for markets, take a look at the instructions behind this link, which goes to Hsifengs livejournal and where she describes how to get at most of the presentations given at the "Costume Colloquium: A Tribute To Janet Arnold" in 2008 in Florence, Italy.

Now that's a wonderful idea, I think!

I feel like I need an energy boost - somehow I'm still tired even though I slept long enough. At least it's Friday, which means that the week is about over.

But before I kick myself in the behind, go brew myself a pot of (hopefully energy-boosting) tea and settle down to some more work before the weekend, here's a totally non-medieval and non-textile but very funny link for you:

So much Pun.

As the title hints (who'd have thought?), it is a website with puns - including photos. So if you have a thing for weird jokes with language, go check it out. This page regularly makes both of us here utter the typical "I-just-got-that-one"-groan - they are that good (or with puns, is that bad?)