It's that time of the year again.

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!