I have successfully started into this week with the new routine, and writing and researching on stuff again does feel wonderful. I now realise that I really missed this kind of work that I somehow didn't get around to do during all of summer - much too long, I think now.

One part of the new project I'm researching for will have to factor in hair and hairstyles in the Middle Ages, a topic I've been pondering for ages now, it seems. And I'm really happy and excited that I will finally have a chance (and the need) to gather all my theories together and test them against the more-or-less hard facts given by pictures and written sources. Hairstyles and haircare are a hairy topic regardless of the time period, since there are so many different ways to work with hair, and no two persons have the same head of hair and the same procedures. And that, of course, means that there's a lot of guesswork to be done, and a lot of things will never be really clear. And in turn, for a try at reproducing old hairstyles, it means that everybody will have to try and see and possibly adapt procedures and details to match the individual hair.

And sometimes I do wonder if that is not the case with all historical reproduction stuff, much more than we today tend to think. There is no "typical medieval person", no more than there is a "typical modern person", but only individuals with their very individual and unique history, and their unique take on things and their own style and set of preferences. Yes, we are all a product of our cultural and social background, but still - there's a lot of personality and individuality in our daily choices, and I'd be very surprised if that was not the case throughout all of history.

Which brings us again to one of the core problems of recreating historical stuff or going for  Living History: the tightrope walk between sticking to the known historical facts only for all things (which is safe, but sometimes not possible, and would let all people that try to re-create a given time in a given area look quite similar) and interpreting stuff freely on basis of things known and things available in the time (which can yield wonderful results, but is not safe because our modern knowledge and modern concepts cannot be erased from our modern heads while doing these interpretations). Ah, the Eternal Dilemma of the Living History Activist.

By the way, my approach to that dilemma is try and get an overview of the archaeological stuff for the item that I want; then take a look at pictures showing said item, to hopefully get an idea of how varied that thing can look; and then decide on how close I can and want to stick to the original.
And then, of course, I try to stay very aware of where I did alter things according to my own interpretations or needs (or even whims) or because of practical reasons, like "but it has to fit into the car" or "I have to be able to carry it" or "I really cannot afford the original material". And when I talk to folks about the item, I usually mention where the sources are from, and how far it has been altered in comparison to the original. A working solution to the Dilemma, for me. And I think Living History would be a much more boring thing if not for that Eternal Dilemma!

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!

My book now has a larger review out - over at huscarl.at. It's a very positive review, so I'm very happy.

If you read German (or just want to have a look at a photo of me), you can go read it here.

My little camera has seen quite a bit of action this last while, and yesterday it had to get out of its nest again to take some pictures in our garage - because this arrived here yesterday afternoon:


Just in case that you can't guess what the content of this sweet little package is (delivered on an old DB-pallet (DB is the German rail service), here it is all opened up:


The content?


My book. One hundred fifteen copies of it. They now sit here in the study, making a very nice stack, waiting to go somewhere where they will want to be read, re-read, lugged around, pulled out of a sewing project bag and stuffed back in, adorned with scribbled notes on scraps of paper stuck between pages, accidentally dropped on the floor, pointed at, maybe even given a coffee or tea stain or two that they can boast to their colleagues. Some of the copies printed might be a bit pernickety and prefer the quiet life of a bookshelf, or the moderately adventurous life of a library book, but I am sure those in my stack are all of the hard-boiled kind that doesn't mind to see things like the insides of bags, sewing supplies close by and lots and lots of use.

Since the books have been delivered to me, they should also have found their way to the publishing house and thus should arrive soon if you have ordered from the publisher or from a local bookstore. If you have, at some point in time, written me an e-mail stating that you are bindingly ordering a copy of the book from me, I will contact you per mail before I send out your book, just to make sure that you don't end up with two copies instead of one. I will also bring the books to Freienfels for those that would like to buy a copy in person.

Sorry, but no photos yet - the camera battery pack needs recharging.

However, I have different good news: The book is scheduled for the actual print run this week! Hooray!

I won't attempt to blog much more than that today, because just thinking of the book going real-ink-on-real-paper... well. Let's say I'm not thinking of much else today.

I had a wonderful cup of celebratory coffee yesterday, to celebrate being finished with the galley proofs. So today, I will use the wonderful early-spring weather to carry the packet to the post office and send it off - next step toward publication: done.

I may have been sighing a lot over how much text there is, and about reading it all again (and again), but I also feel that it is absolutely wonderful to work together with a publishing house on this. I read the stuff, I mark the little typos that had skilfully managed not to get noticed by anyone, I write my comments about picture sizes and picture placement and single letters with special Czech or Polish accents that were taken from a different font and gaps a little too small or a little too large between words and special characters or between lines; then I send it off to somewhere else and magic! All the marked-up things are taken care of! By SOMEBODY ELSE!

Having done the layout for the thesis submission version myself, I can very much appreciate how much work goes into these things - because once you change something in the front of the book, the change might well ricochet further on, maybe to the end of the chapter or even to the end of the part or, if things go really badly, all to the end of the book. And re-checking and re-layouting some 500 pages and change  - believe me, that is not what you'd like to do on a sunny afternoon or a rainy one. So I try to be a good layout-wise author and when I need to make a change, I try to do the wording so there's only change in that one paragraph or on that one page. Wasn't possible in one case in the first run, though, and that really ricocheted for the rest of the chapter.
And when I tried to do my best not to make ugly work-intensive changes, I send it off, lean back, have a celebratory coffee (or two) and am very, very happy that I am not alone in this. Hooray for publishing houses and the wonderful people who work there!

After the wonderful planning session in South Tyrol, it's back to the usual, and nose back onto the grindstone. I'm on the last bits of proofreading, having been very diligently reading about all day during the last two days, and I hope to finish today or, at the latest, tomorrow. Thankfully there are more pictures in the catalogue part than in the front bits, which makes reading ten pages go much, much faster.

On the other fronts, there has been some movement as well: The market stall sewing is progressing, and occasionally I even snatch a few minutes for knitting on the current design and planning for the next one. Once the more pressing matters - stall and proof-reading - are done, I hope to get one or two patterns out for test-knitting.

Did I ever feel unsure about being able to fill my time as freelancer?