Firstly, the proceedings of the Textile Forum are coming along nicely - the proofs have been proof-read by our very diligent editor, and currently the cover is being tweaked. Soon, very soon our little Textile Forum will have something more to its name than the website and the conference!

Speaking of which - we will have a meeting for planning our next Forum this April, and after that we hope to be able to get the Call for Papers out. Our Forum date and focus topic is already settled upon: Decoration on Textiles - dye, print, embroidery and paint. For more information, as always, go to our Forum homepage.

Now on to more proceedings: There were two sessions titled "Dressing the Part: Textiles as Propaganda in the Middle Ages" in the College Art Association 98th Annual Conference that took place in Chicago, IL, in February 2010. Not only is the conference programme still available on their website, they are also offering an MP3-recording of the second session for download (it costs 25 USD). It's a pity they are not offering the first session, which would have been much more interesting for me.

And there is a volume coming out this summer:

Dimitrova, Kate ; Margaret Goehring (eds.).
 Dressing the Part: Textiles as Propaganda in the
Middle Ages. Turnhout: Brepols, (June 2013).
28cm., pbk., ca. 350pp., 32 color, 150 b&w illus,
210 x 275 mm. English text. ISBN-13 9782503536767 ISBN-10 250353676X
They are approximating the price at about 100 €, but it looks as if it's not really fixed yet. More info available via the publisher's website.

A few nice, new and exciting things have come to my attention, internet-wise, during the last days - so it's time for a link list.

A find of a smelting oven, not too far from here, has been radiocarbon-dated. It's from the 13th century, making it one of the quite late ovens of that type. Read more about it (and see pics) in the Schauhuette blog.

If you are more into graphics design, you might be interested in having a look at the Elephants of Typography.

There's something new out regarding the finds of Lengberg - parts of the find are presented in the book "The Tudor Child". Beatrix Nutz has also made a website about this in German and in English, including some additional information about the pieces that will not be in the book.

There will be a conference about children's garments in Krefeld in May; the German language info page is here.

And finally, something not so nice: A 15 year old girl on the Maledives was raped by her stepfather - and was then sentenced to public flogging because she had sex while not married. I won't go into that further, because it's obviously so, so wrong on so, so many levels. The only positive thing about it is that word got out, and now there is a public outcry about it, and a petition running to get the Maledives government to abolish that law and institute better protection for rape victims (and actual prosecution for the criminals!). It's run by Avaaz, and signing is easy the first time and even easier once you have registered in their network.

Which is exactly what is standing in front of me right now.

Now for today's content (more or less):

Norway has damaged one of its many road tunnels by burning goat cheese in there. Really. (h/t to Phiala of Stringpage)

Both Kalamazoo and Leeds are casting their shadows ahead - there is a sneak preview of the 'zoo programme available already, and Leeds programme is available. If you are interested in textile-related things, DISTAFF has all its sessions on Thursday, July 4. There are a few very interesting-sounding papers in there, a pity I will not be able to make it to Leeds this year. Online registration will be available from February 15, and the Call for Papers for Leeds 2014 seems to be already running as well.

And in totally different news: Our little cat has relented. Even though her performance in the piece written for at least one human and one cat, named "I have such a hard life and now you are making it even harder unless you do exactly what I want, meow" was absolutely flawless and Broadway-worthy, she did not get around inhaling her medicine. (Nor did she get called to Broadway for performing there.) Though there was a generous portion of cat treats afterwards, as usual. And wondrously enough, this morning it did not seem to be that bad anymore... since all that her performance amounted to was a longer wait for the treats and food and being allowed outside. There was even some purring while inhaling. Cats.

Here are some more stacked-up notes and dates and things...

- There is a conference about Castles at War, AD 1000-1660, taking place the 29th and 30th April 2013 at Nyborg Castle, Funen, Denmark. More about it here.

- On February 9, the King's College London is offering a course called "Constructing Clothing: Exploring the Making of Dress". More info here.

-Just in case you did not know, there is a manuscript/picture search possibility of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, called Mandragore.

In other news, the cat was even less fond of getting her medicine this morning. Sigh. It's hard to stay patient and upbeat when it seems to be not at all appreciated... She also seems to think that we are running out of food, since she got us some yummy (in her opinion) fresh prey and gave it to me (only reserving the cat rights to play with it some more, of course). Cats. Says it all, right?

It feels enormously, deliciously nice to be back home again after several weeks of being only there for a very short breather and then off again to something somewhere. Even though I enjoyed all the away-time a lot – Christmas with the family, New Year with friends, the EAC with colleagues – I am now really content with being home for some time, getting stuff into order and taking care of all the interesting things that were on the back-burner all this while. And catching up on cuddling the cat!

But you probably want to know about the conference much more than about how happy I am to be home again, so…

 The EAC took place in two locations - one of the university buildings (which was ample room for the ~100 participants of the conference) and at St Fagan's, a little ways outside Cardiff. It started with a very nice meet-up in the Pen and Wig on Thursday evening and then went into a tightly-packed programme of papers all Friday long. The topics were varied and interesting, and I enjoyed most of the papers very much. (With a few, I had some trouble understanding everything, since the speakers sometimes mumbled a little, but that's to be expected.) 
I especially enjoyed the paper about the ovens used for cooking on the Mary Rose, which was a totally astounding contraption that I'd love to cook in. Well, maybe not really, seeing as it's for feeding about 500 people.

After the papers, there was wine, snacks and a poster session before almost all of us walked off to a conference dinner.

Saturday we were taken to St Fagan's in a bus that seated 70 persons (though the persons it was intended for were much younger than archaeologists usually are), which was a little cramped but must have looked very amusing to anyone watching the bus spit out almost 70 adults instead of the schoolchildren that its bright yellow colour would lead one to expect.

The papers at St Fagan's were as nice as those the day before, but unfortunately the weather was not. Any open air museum will look much nicer in sunshine and good weather than in fog, grey clouds and drizzling rain - but I still enjoyed having a little walk around the premises and peeping into a few of the houses.

As all conferences, this one was too short, and unfortunately I was quite tired and not up to my best networking abilities. There's always the trade-off at conferences between a programme packed full of papers*, getting much into a short time, or leaving lots of room for questions and socialising at the cost of having fewer presentations. Cardiff EAC clearly opted for a full programme which left me more exhausted than I would have wished. So somehow I have the feeling that I could have gotten more out of it - but then one never knows what will follow later. At least I did manage to deliver my talk, do a spinning presentation and meet a good number of new people, as well as catch up with old aquaintances. And hear about a number of very interesting topics!

And I fear the something making it slow is contagious - at least I feel quite slow too these days! At least yesterday evening was successful in terms of cookie baking. Something productive done, yay!

Now for your content of today:
Registration for the Experimental Archaeology conference in Cardiff in January is still open, and will be until December 22. So if you are inclined to visit Cardiff on January 11 and 12 (or a bit longer, even), this would be a perfect excuse.

And I'm already looking forward very, very much to this - it will mean meeting nice colleagues again and hanging out in Cardiff. (I will not bore you with Dr. Who and Torchwood fanpersoning now... but if you would like to join me in saying "Cardiff!" in an excited way, feel free.)

* It is never a good idea to spill your coffee in the car. Mostly out of two reasons: You will have much less coffee, and you will have to clean the car.

* It would be so handy to have a scanner with an automatic paper feeder thingie, so that I could just digitise my paper copies of articles.

* The Internet is full of weird stuff. (I knew that before, but it bears repeating.)

* Our little cat does not care for snow and prefers to stay inside when it's cold, except for a very quick dash outside to take care of cat business. The stinky kind.

* Clearing space on your study floor by sorting out those stacks of stuff and finding better storage places for other things actually means that you can see more floor.

* No brownies appeared over night (again!) to continue my book-sorting. Or to put up the Forum photos onto the Forum website. (I have not forgotten, Harma.)

* The end of year is nearing, and there are the usual "won't you give us money" phone calls.

* I will be giving a paper at Cardiff conference in January, and possibly also a demonstration. Registration is still possible, should you like to come.

* Time flies. (Yes, I know. Not new as well. But like the internet being full of weird stuff... I am convinced that this may be repeated from time to time.)