First and foremost - our first Beast Blogtour piece is out! It is posted on the new blog at the Amberley Publishing website, where Gillian and I talk about how we got involved with studying the Middle Ages.

Then there's several Calls for Papers out:

The EXAR conference (experimental archaeology) at the Saalburg, October 1-4. (CfP is running until 15. July; please note that while it may look bi-lingual, to my knowledge these last years the conference was mostly German papers, posters, and talks, and I would not recommend going there unless you have some German language skills. If you understand German, though - I've had some absolutely lovely times at EXAR conferences!)

If you prefer warm Spain to cool Germany, there's the international meeting Technical Knowledge in Europe, September 17-19 2015.
It will review the key historiographical subjects regarding artistic and industrial technology in the Late Middle Ages and the first century of the Modern Period. One of the meeting’s core targets is to highlight the variety of methods with which the issue can be approached, from the study of the written record to archaeological investigation; and from the examination of technical recipes to the scientific analysis of works of art and archaeological materials. Find more information at their website. CfP is open until June 30.

Not a conference, also German, but still maybe interesting: Nobilitas has resurrected their "Akademie" - a weekend of papers, presentations and discussion for Living History people, taking place November 6-8. You can find out more about it on their website.


Some archaeology now, maybe? There's been a find of a viking-age grave with blacksmithing tools (German article here, unfortunately without links.)

Or some book-shopping? I have just learned this morning about http://www.eurobuch.com/,  a site to search for books (and compare book prices).

Today is release day! Hooray!

I think I will celebrate with coffee and chocolate an a bit of sitting in the sunshine...






... before I continue working on all the other stuff that needs to be dealt with today. (This, I am sure, includes checking the sales rank of the book now and then.)

Things I already did up until now? Work with Margit on the pattern of a scarf for a joint-venture knitting pack. Work with Gillian on blogposts about the Beast. Rescue a sparrow that the cat dragged in (the bird was unharmed apart from a good scare, but the cat was a bit miffed that I took it away from her). Answer a few emails... and check the sales rank. Obviously. (But only once!)

There's a huge stack of links I want to share with you!


A German archaeologist, specialising on excavation and research of gallows squares and other places of execution, is trying out crowdfunding for her upcoming excavation project. You can take a look at the (German) page here - it definitely is an interesting excavation, and I hope she'll succeed with her funding!

Ferguson Municipal Public Library has received the award for the "Library of the Year". The article shows what a library can be and do for the public - that award was really deserved!

You might have stumbled across an article telling you that chocolate can help weight loss during the last months - it was all over the internet, and apparently all over print media, too. That study was actually a half-hoax - it was intended to show how unreliable pseudo-studies will have an impact on diet fads and public opinion, revealed by the author about two weeks ago. Let's hope this helps, because what John Bohannon writes about the many studies that tell you anything you wish is unfortunately true... fat is good for you, fat is bad for you, carbohydrates are good for you, bad for you, ... there's studies to prove all this. More or less, that is.

The Sad Puppies Hugo thing is still making waves.
Related to that, Kameron Hurley has a rant on her blog that I found well worth reading.

The Middle Ages' love for colour extended to the subtle colouring of gold alloys - as evident on the Shrine of Our Lady of Huy, c 1260. A group of researchers has studied recipes and the actual colouring of the shrine. (Linked article contains link to the actual study paper behind the Maney paywall.)

Genevra Kornbluth has a photo archive about "luxury arts" online, including many museum objects dating back to the Middle Ages.

And if that was not enough of a Linkfest for you, go over to Phiala's blog - she has linkage, too.

Yesterday, the postie came and delivered this:


Copies of The Middle Ages Unlocked! And right in time so I can send out pre-orders for the release date, which is June 15, or Monday! (If you order one right now, I'll send it out as soon as possible, though with the Deutsche Post on strike, I cannot promise that you will have it on Monday.) The second box from the top in the stack, by the way, was the best box - it contained this:


The piece of paper is the best kind of invoice there is - an invoice marked "These title(s) are being sent with the compliments of the Publisher".

Opening such a box? That is a priceless, precious moment.

There are things that we see, or use, that look easy. Easy as pie, and they are convenient and quickly picked up or quickly used, and nobody ever thinks about how much work has gone into them.

Take a book, for instance. It has contents (hopefully!) and a cover and a price, and there is writing and cover artwork and editing and layouting and printing going on before you can pick it up and settle down for a nice read. Or a film - even if you know that there will me much, much more that is filmed before the cuts reduce it, it's still something different to experience it yourself.

The same is true for something like an embroidery kit. Which tells you that I am still working on it - this iteration, there is tweaking and testing of the pre-drawing, taking still more notes about what needs to go into the instructions, and testing of how well the frame works for all this. I'm also testing the needles that will be included in the kit and making exact notes of how much thread is used for which of the parts. Meanwhile, the fabric for the final version has been sent off to be dyed, and I want to have finished this second prototype by the time it gets back here.


It's not the final pre-drawing, but pretty close to how it will be, both regarding shape, size and placement. The frame on a closer look (and especially upon touch) is obviously not real wood, but it looks very nice in combination with the dark blue fabric. As I want the kit to be so complete that you can get started right away and end with something that can be used as decoration without further ado, this frame is the perfect solution even though it's very modern.

And this is how the embroidery looks at the moment:






As you can see, I have not progressed so very far. I hope to find a bit of time this evening, though, so that I can at least finish the middle leaf!

The cat, meanwhile, is thoroughly un-impressed:

Today is one of these days where I got sidetracked by stuff - in this case, learning some more about the functions of my book-keeping programme. There are definitely new possibilities to do things that will make this part of work easier and quicker in the future, but it ended up eating most of my morning (or at least most of it).

So, before I go to frantically do all the things I wanted to have done before noon (such as drafting blog posts for the blog tour, and finishing a paper that is due, and finalising the English version of the spinning instructions, and hanging up the washing), here's a link for you:

A fully dressed noblewoman from the 17th century was found in France.

This Friday night, Pierre Brice has died, aged 86.

If you are German and my age, or probably a bit older, or a bit younger, chances are high that Pierre Brice has helped form your image of Native Americans - even though he was French, and the reason for this formative action was a German author living in the late nineteenth century who had never been to America when he wrote a series of novels... featuring a German adventurer and a noble Native American.

I am, of course, talking about Karl May and the Winnetou novels. Pierre Brice was the actor portraying Winnetou, the Apache hero, and I watched the films as a child and teenager, enjoying them immensely. I had posters of the Pierre Brice Winnetou in my room, and I was reading up on Native American culture* and listening to Country music. I remember dressing up playmobil cattle with shredded brown napkins to look like bison, and building playmobil-sized teepees for my "Indianer".

I read Karl May's novels, not only Winnetou but a lot of the others as well - many, many hours of reading. I watched the Winnetou films, and I had the soundtrack. We went to watch the Karl May festival at Elspe... I had a lot of good times thanks to Karl May.

A while ago, I discovered that a) the popular image of Native Americans in Germany is surprising to some people, and that b) not everybody knows where this comes from. (In case you do not know, it's very positive overall - Native Americans are living in harmony with nature, are almost always playing fair and are very honorable... you get the idea.) Well, one of the reasons for the spreading of this popular image has died on Friday.

For those of you who would like a glimpse of one of the films, here is the first part of the three-film series about Winnetou.  Watching a bit of it should give you a good impression of Old Shatterhand, Winnetou, the portrayal of Native Americans in these films, and the general not-so-small cheesiness of the movies.



Rest in peace, Pierre Brice.


*That meant I did discover most of what Karl May wrote was, well, not close to the truth. It was fascinating anyway.