... so maybe you have the desire to look at pictures?

There is a large-ish list of picture databases and meta-search sites for pictures here on Wikiversity. The text is German (but the links are clickable from anywhere in the world, as usual), and lots of the databases are probably non-relevant regarding medieval textiles and costume, but have a look yourself. The last parcel is international sources, so at least they should also be available in English.

And if you find a real gem in there somewhere, please tell me!

You have of course heard about the Lengberg Underwear finds - Beatrix Nutz is still very active publishing them, and a new article in French is in "Histoire et Images Medievales" published this month.

Meanwhile, others are putting their own experience together with the new finds, such as Isis Sturtevagen, who has a very interesting article about medieval underwear on her blog.

In non-bra news, the first Call for Papers for the 2013 UK Experimental Archaeology Conference to be held at Cardiff University and St Fagans National History Museum, Cardiff, on 11 – 12 January 2013, is out. Information and the usual other stuff ; ) can be found at the conference blog/website.

And finally, and something totally different: There's a new archaeological dissertation blog online, about “Sámi circular offering sites – a comparative archaeological analysis”. It is a PhD project in archaeology by Marte Spangen, Stockholm University.
I think it's very nice that more and more PhD folks blog about their work!

This time courtesy of the Bodleian Library - it's in three categories, with two of them interesting and helpful for non-library users, since they are open access.

And the University of Notre Dame somewhere in the United States has a digital library of their pre-1600 manuscripts, searchable also by keywords - at least this is what the site promises, I had a timeout error when I tried my usual keyword.

And finally, a truly huge collection of links to museum databases and digital collections. It's 147 items long, not all of them medieval, but certainly with plenty of useful and interesting databases.

And now I finally have a few less tabs open in my browser!

First of all, one of those links I mentioned a good while ago: the Cambridge Digital Library. There's actually two sites, and older and a new one, listing some books that are digitised either partly or (in case of the newer site) cover-to-cover. The link goes to the old one (which has a link to the new one right on top).

Unfortunately, my standard tests of searchability (using the terms "spinning wheel", "spinning" and "spindle", sometimes also "wool" and "distaff") did not yield any results, and it does not seem as if there are keywords matched to the pages or illuminations. Still, it's old books with pics, online for free.

More old books, online for free (provided they are already public domain) can be found in the HathiTrust Library. There is the possibility to create a login and put together a collection of items, or browse others' collections. That includes 18th century cookbooks, for those of you who favour an old-fashioned roast.

And speaking of books... have you ever wondered why some folks offer out-of-print (or even still in print) books on amazon for really, really ridiculously high prices? It seems that pricing algorithms are to blame. Those companies don't even set the prices themselves, they are having a programme do that, which can lead to interesting results - as described here.

That was not so miscellaneous, right? I can change that.

Here. Gratuitous cat pic.

First of all a link to an archaeological find (h/t to Cathy, who blogged this first ): Unique find at Viking Burial Place (with textiles).

Then there's an ebook library with lots of free ebooks, including some about archaeology. As with one of the library links I posted before, there's unfortunately no proper "about" info - the site footer is written in something that looks like kyrillic script to me. Use with your own conscience and smarts intact, and please consider buying a version of a book through your book dealer of preference in case you really like one of the books.

And finally, a link to one of the databases that I wrote about a few days ago: the Contini-Volterra Photographic Archive, with images from the 12th to 20th century. They have a searchable database with descriptions, though "spindle" and "spinning" are not in there, and all pics I have seen in my glance at it were black and white. Still, lots of pictures and searchable by, for example, saints' names.

I have been writing this blog here since December 8, 2008. I am trying hard to post something interesting each day - or at least to post something, preferably interesting. In those three-and-a-half years, I have not had a single guest post. I actually did all the 728 posts myself. If I copy-paste any content into this blog, it's something like a call for papers that gets sent out with the aim of being distributed to interested persons - and I like to help in that.

Which means that to any person taking more than a very, very casual glance at my blog, it should be quite clear that I am not going to do post exchanges or post advertisements. Yes, I will plug my own stuff (hey, it's my blog, after all) and I will praise other things that I am happy about - but not because I was asked to do so, but because I want to. Because I am convinced that there is something in high quality for a fair price. And I have never gotten any compensation for my plugs. (Most of the "you are so going to want this" posts are about free internet resources anyways.)

So. I still get the occasional "oh your blog is sooo coool please visit my site" comment spam (which I delete) and, about as rarely, a mail praising my blog with a standard set phrase and then the offer of either a link exchange or "guest posts" coming from that other site, or some money if I advertise for a product in my texts. Usually, I just ignore them. Sometimes when I feel like it, I will take a look at the site, laugh, and then delete the email. But this morning I received one of the guest post offer mails that didn't only (as usual) make it very obvious the person writing it had not taken a good proper look at my blog (though becoming a "fan" right away)... that person didn't even know the real topic of the post I was offered as a guest post, which did not fit in at all with my own focus.

So I finally took this opportunity of total incredulity on my part (really? you really think I will now believe anything your site hosts is well-researched?) and sent that person an answer mail... raising the offer. With picture of Wil Wheaton collating papers. (If you have never heard about that and get weird offers sometimes too, do click the link. If you haven't heard about it and don't get weird offers... oh, click it anyways. At least I think it's funny.)

Hah. Something I had wanted to do for ages. Who says weird soliciting mails are not good for anything?

Yesterday, I received a mail informing me that a colleague had stumbled across a .pdf version of a Festschrift for Frans Verhaeghe, online and downloadable free of charge. Since I am a curious person, I took a look at the link she had posted. And since I'm a very curious person, I then took a look at the site that hosted the file.