My normal life style does not include lots of reading or listening to the news, but even if you don't try to catch news every day, the big issues sooner or later still come up somewhere. Like the Haiti earthquake.
To help with relief in Haiti, the Yarn Harlot has put up the knit signal (like the bat signal, but with more yarn) and asks for donations to MSF (Médecins sans Frontières, which means Doctors Without Borders).

MSF has been doing great work all over the world for many years, and I personally think that they are one of the best humanitarian organisations to give money to - because besides other reasons, very very little of the donations does go into the overhead, and most goes to where it is needed. So if you have a little money left over, consider giving them a bit - and if you need a better pro-donation pep talk, read Stephanie the Yarn Harlot's blog.

I am slowly but steadily reading and correcting my way through the book. As always, there are passages where nothing is amiss and then a bit where things come in groups, which is keeping the proofing work more or less interesting. I'm almost through the text part now and I hope I won't find a real bad blunder on that last stretch; and afterwards, it's onward to the catalogue, where I'll meet (and read) all those dear garments from all over Europe again. I'm almost half-way, page number-wise, and there are more pictures in the catalogue part, but still I'm in for many more pages (and probably quite a few rounds on the hat during the reading breaks).

Meanwhile, I have a link to share: I have come across the Antique Pattern Library, a page where you can find pdf files of scanned old needlework books. Whether you are looking for crocheting, tattting, knitting or filet patterns, that is a place where you will find something. There's even the reprint of a 1527 Modelbuch (pattern book) with pattern strips for embroidery - and lots more from the late 19th and early 20th century. If you have a thing for old patterns or instructions, that is definitely an online library to check out.

Somehow I have the feeling that blogging has gotten a little unhinged with all the gaps and holidays during the last weeks - I can't really remember any red thread running through the last time (except those off-blog), there's not much interesting going on here work-wise because I'm still in the taking-things-back-out-of-boxes phase. Well, there are two interesting things going on: Thing number one, we now have bought enough additional shelves that I can take the rest of my books (the work-related books!) out of their boxes and start the process of arranging things on the shelf space, and thing number two, I'm reading the first proof of the thesis-going-book. Nothing spectacular that is good to make a juicy blog post about, though!

But meanwhile, I have received a lot of interesting info bits in the mail or found it on the net.

So, in the hopes of getting back on track with things, here's an info dump...

There will be an international conference and exhibition about natural dyes in France, 2011: the conference webpage.

In March 2009, I gave a little interview for one issue of Huscarl On Air, the radio show from Huscarl, which is a forum and online magazine for the living history scene in Austria. The whole radio show is in German, but if you can understand spoken German, the podcast of this issue has recently been uploaded, and you can get it here.

There is a new database for radiocarbon-dated textiles, hosted by University of Bonn: "An on-line database for 14C-dated textiles (from early times until the end of 1rst millennium AD) is about to be finished. It is undertaken by the Dept. of Christian Archaeology of Bonn university
(Sabine Schrenk [responsible], Frank Albert, Anne-Sophie Lüttge; programmed by Eberhard and
Jan Orzekowsky), in collaboration with the KIK IRPA in Brussels (Mark van Strydonck). "
The makers of the database are actively soliciting data for their project. The database (and all relevant contact info, including a form to get your museum's data into the database) can be found at www.textile-dates.info. I think such a database is an absolutely wonderful idea!

And a last personal aside, I have finally caved and subscribed to Ravelry (because it irked me much too much that I would find patterns or photos referenced, but could not take a look at them). If you want to find me there, I go under the moniker "katrinknits" (yes, I know, very imaginative).

I actually missed my blogiversary, which was on December 8 - that was Tuesday last week. And that even though I had marked it in my calendar, to be sure I won't forget it.

But then the internet-less time came, and the trials and tribulations of the move, and the stacks of boxes distracted me, and I completely forgot the blogiversary. Even though I think that it really is something worth celebrating - a year is quite a bit of time, after all!

When I started this blog last December, I was not sure at all how blogging would work out for me. I knew, however, that I did want the blog to offer something new regularly. Some blogs I had already read for a good while did inspire me to do the blogging-daily thing, and the most important of those is Kristin Nelson's blog Pub Rants. No, it has nothing to do with watering holes, selling beer and snacks, it's short for "publication", and I really liked (and still like) her style of writing and the fact that - with very few exceptions - I could have a few minutes every day, reading the news from Kristin, half-way across the globe.

And now, after the first year of blogging, I am really happy I tried it. I have a bunch of regular readers (and commenters), and getting feedback on the things I do and the texts I write does feel wonderful. Posting weekdaily is by far not as difficult as I had feared. Of course there's the occasional day where I can't think of anything much, but there are a few strategies that help with that: I try to cover one topic only per post and store other ideas in the drafts section, I try to have one or two "emergency posts" completely pre-written in the drafts section, and I am just generally on the watch for bloggable things - interesting links and webpages, for example. And then of course I don't blog on the weekends, and I will take time off* for holidays, events and travelling, things where blogging would be difficult or troublesome. All that together makes daily blogging a fun thing to do for me, a nice way to start off my day, and I hope that it will stay like this for at least a year or two more!

* All that time off results in about 203 posts during the one year, which is about 0.5562 posts per day, or one post every 1.79 days. Which sounds much less impressive than "I blog daily". You see me humbled.

Life is so much nicer with pictures! And life is getting nicer and nicer these days, with more and more databases and pictures from museums coming up online. Here's another one that came to my attention very recently: The Universitetsmuseenes fotoportal, with pictures of finds from four different museums. The pictures include some shots of the Oseberg findings, and there's some textile there too (of course).

You can search over all four museums by using the little search box - just remember that it's Norwegian, so make sure to type "tekstil" if you are looking for fibery things. I would love to link a good English-Norwegian online dictionary here to help with the search terms, but I haven't found one yet - the few I tested did not even know how to translate "textile" into Norwegian. Instead, if you need a German-Norwegian translation (or if you know the search term you want in German but not Norwegian), I can point you to trusty Heinzelnisse, where you can even play vocabulary games to improve your language skills...

Quite a little stack of links to interesting places and things has accumulated in my "slow blogging day" stash, but they are much too good to languish away. So here's a link drop - I hope there's something for you in there, too!

- Two blogs that recently came to my attention: Fait Attention and Publishing Archaeology.

- For those of you working with MS Word, there's a webpage with tons of good advice, instructions, makros and stuff at the Editorium. This site has helped me a lot when finishing off and layouting my thesis. I still wouldn't recommend to use pictures in large Word files, though. (My pics were layouted half-automatically, using the Word-generated picture list, a homemade makro and LaTex. Not the best layout ever, but very little work.)

- A new project is researching medieval soldiers "to challenge assumptions about the emergence of professional soldiery between 1369 and 1453", and they have put a database online where you can search almost 90 000 muster records for soldiers from 1369 to 1453. So don't forget The Soldier in Later Medieval Times when you are looking for muster information!

- I'm very happy that I usually don't have to cope with Latin (and I would look for help if I had to), but for those who are, there's Du Cange's medieval latin glossary available online: beware the rather large .pdf.

- And for those who read French, there's a bimonthly magazine called "Histoire et images Medievales", with some articles available for download. And of course with nice pictures!

Once in a while, you stumble over something smashing on the Internet. That happened to me yesterday (leading to some work time reduction and late bed-going due to having to watch funny videos on Youtube). Did you know that CBBC has a series of utterly funny sketches and songs titled "Horrible Histories", making history lessons the most amusing thing ever?

Now I will finally remember what happened to Henry VIII's wives, because of watching this:



And the perfect follow-up for that video is the Terrible Tudors song:



For those lucky enough to be in the right area (unfortunately I'm not), there's also the official webpage of the show, where you can watch snippets, videos and the episodes shown during the last seven days (now I'm jealous!) and even play a game called "Terrible Treasures".