I have found out about Doug's "Blogging Archaeology" carnival half a month ago, when that post was quite new. Now Rainer Schreg from Archaeologik (which is a mostly German blog) has joined in, bilangually. He has also condensed the basic info about that carnival beautifully:

At the SAA annual meeting 2014 in Texas there will be a Blogging Archaeology session. The weblog Doug's Archaeology by Doug Rocks-Macqueen contributes by hosting a blogging carnival (explained here). Each month leading up to the SAAs in April, Doug will post a question. Answers will be blogged at the individual blogs. At the end of each month, Doug will collect all posts and add their links.

The blogging topic for November: Why blogging? – Why did you, or if it was a group- the group, start a blog? Why are you still blogging?


Ever since I have read about the carnival, I was on the fence about it. Yes, I do have a blog, and I am an archaeologist, but I don't really see my blog here as a proper archaeology blog. But what the heck - I am going to join into the fun today, and I will let you (and Doug!) decide whether my blog is an archaeology blog - or not.

I started blogging back in 2008, December - the fifth blogiversary is almost upon me, can you believe it? When I started out, I had just finished my PhD thesis and was searching for a publishing house to take it on; I was starting out as a freelancer full-time, and I had no idea where my life would actually go. I was, however, already mostly out of the digging part of archaeology. (I loved the digs, but I tend to get knee issues when digging, and I knew years before that I did not want to do the actual digging forever.)

My (not-so-secret) plan was to regularly post things about archaeological textiles or garments and share things that I do, or find, including tips for computer gadgets, websites, books, and Calls for Paper. The blog was started because I had been reading blogs for a good while and just liked how people would share things and post excitingly interesting links, but it was also intended, right from the start, as a method of getting word about my work out there into the world - the work which happens to be connected, at least, to archaeology.
This blog saw my first bigger museum projects, as well as the birth of the Textile Forum. I have partly documented quite a few of my projects, and, as usual for blogs, started this or that blogging venture that soon tapered off into nothing (anyone remember the "all the gory details" venture? No? I'm glad you don't.). I have also used it to bleg, with varying success (mostly due to the very obscure things I was blegging for!) and have, according to plan, posted some things about medieval garments and other actually old things (tagged as "togs from bogs" even though they are not all bog finds).

Basically, the blog still does what I intended it to do, from the start - I share details (or vague allusions, in some cases) about my ongoing projects, I blog about conferences (mostly the CfPs, that is), occasionally about archaeological textiles, experimental archaeology or crafts, and there's a bit of self-promotion sprinkled in. There are not so many posts about ancient textiles as I had secretly hoped and planned to do, which is to the most part due to their taking up quite a lot of time. However, I still manage to blog most days, just like I planned from the start. There are blog-less days due to holidays, or conferences, or illnesses, but you get a post every weekday otherwise.
Just in case you wonder now why I planned on blogging Monday to Friday from the very beginning... that's because I was convinced that otherwise I would totally forget that it was Blog Day Today. Which I still am. And nothing is more frustrating than a blog you enjoy not posting at least from time to time, semi-regularly. So I made a decision to go for a daily post, even if just a short one, even if it would mean less really big and substantial posts due to time issues, because I personally would prefer having regular smaller updates to having very occasional bigger ones. And also, for me personally, if a blog only updates once in a blue moon, it needs to have really, really good and interesting posts to make me want to bother and check in on it from time to time.

I'm still blogging, obviously. I do it because I still think it's a good idea, and I hope what I have to say is helpful and interesting to readers - surely not every thing for every reader, but nobody manages that. So I blog on, even though sometimes it is hard to find the ideas, or something to blog about, or the motivation to add in those links and format those pictures. (Yes, sorry, I'm a lazy person in that respect.) The blogging in the morning (my morning, in case you are time-shifted) has become part of my daily routine, and I'd probably miss this. I would probably also miss having the blog as a good excuse to read other blogs and keep up with stuff and randomly click interesting links all because well, I need to have something to blog about, and maybe I could blog about that tomorrow?
When I have a bad day (or week), and I think about stopping the blog, I keep going because a) it would be stupid to have made all this investment of time and effort and good vibes into the blog just to stop because of a bad streak, and b) much more importantly, I hope that there are  people who would actually miss their regular read here, and the occasional useful link. Also, I still think defunct blogs are sad, and I don't want to add to the overall sadness of the Internet.

So there you have it. That's why I started blogging, and why I still keep on doing it.

Here you go, a little link salad, just for you:

The concept of Home in the age of the Internet: here.

German place names, in phonetic English, on a map (embedded in a German article): here.

Larsdatter's content index for the series "Medieval Textiles and Clothing": here.

The (now finished) project homepage of "Fashioning the Early Modern": here.

Joconde, the collections database and portal of French museums (in French, naturellement): here.

Otherwise, thank goodness it's Friday - this week was chock-full of work. It was nice, gratifying work for the most part, but that still means I am really looking forward to the weekend!

I had a really intense and long day at the library yesterday, checking out a huge stack of books for different projects going on at the moment, and actually managing to work through some of them right away so I did not have to lug them all back home (just most of them). As usual when I'm in the TB 5 in Bamberg, it was a lovely day even though full of work - because that library is just the best one ever.

Libraries are per definition an awesome thing. I mean - books! Lots of them! In shelves, ordered, and with a searchable catalogue! Now add to that a large, always friendly and always helpful staff, even more wonderful books, a very good catalogue with the possibility to get books from other branches of the uni library quite quickly, the option to request inter-library loans with no hassle and no cost and, best of all, the possibility to request books for purchase. Then you have my library.

These days, I don't get there so often anymore, but back when I was working on my PhD thesis, I used to walk in there and sometimes, my books would be on the counter before I'd made it there. There are accessible stacks where you get to move stack-shelves with these fancy wheels, which I totally love. There are lots of tables, there is lots of light, and you have a nice view across the Regnitz river from some of these places. Plus internet options if you plug your computer in with a LAN cable.
Also, thanks to the "request-a-book" feature, Bamberg University has a quite impressive stack of archaeological textile literature, which makes it an even better place to me. (Guess who handed in many of these requests...) See? Best library ever.

If you have a good and friendly library - go tell your librarians you really appreciate them (and it). They have earned it - and libraries don't get enough praise anyways...

A good while ago, someone working with archaeological textile finds asked me if I had thicker linen yarn, two-ply, for re-creating a braid. It took me a long while to find a good source for them, but I was successful at last, and can now offer two-ply linen that is about one mm in diameter, in both white and naturally coloured. It's a soft, thick yarn that will lend itself not only to braiding, but may also be worth considering if you have a very coarse cloth and want a thick yarn to go with it, or if you are looking for a reinforcement thread.

I have not managed to take the shop photos of them yet, but the daring can already order the thread - they are online as of this morning.

It's a little later than what I usually blog about, but it more than makes up for it in splendour: There is an exhibition, very recently started, on the textiles of August der Starke (the strong), 1670-1733. The textiles stem from the polish coronation ceremony in 1697 and a wedding 1719 in Dresden, and they are exhibited together with thread-by-thread reconstructions in Dresden. This means it's possible to see and compare how the textiles look now and how they most probably looked when they were brand new and used for representation. The information about the exhibition says something about gold and silver cloth, velvets, gold embroidery and bright beautiful deep colours - all the best that textile manufacture is able to give.

The exhibition has just started on the 13th of November and will run until February 24, 2014. You can learn more about it on this English info page about the exhibition...

I think I shall go see Dresden, soon-ish.

It's all grey, grey and foggy. We need to go and do grocery shopping. The cat is (as usual) sleeping on her bed beside my desk (which is, as usual, in dire need of some more order). There's a stack of smallish and semi-pleasant tasks that I have been putting off or not found the time for, such as marking and putting away fabric samples, or working my way through a stack of paper.

My main task for today, however, is to write - I need to finish putting something together regarding medieval dress accessories. I have coffee, I have books, I have the internet, so technically nothing is keeping me from opening up that file and writing.

While I am doing this, you could go on with your day - or you could have a rootle through the grey literature, project archives and theses of the archaeological data service. Grey literature, for those that do not know the term, is unpublished and usually hard-to-access documentation; the internet makes this much easier. So if you always wanted to read a fieldwork documentation of an archaeological dig - this is the place for you to go.

I have tea (in a Disappearing Tardis mug, no less); breakfast; a sleeping cat beside me and a heap of work to do, including sending in abstracts.

I have also been spinning, testing out a spiral-shaped notch at the tip of a spindle stick as well as different ways of dressing a distaff with wool, since my old way (wrapping the top around the top of the distaff) does not work with Kathelyne's reconstructed spinning technique. Which I have used, and fallen totally and deeply in love with.

In non-spinning regard, I have not only hunted for pictures of medieval textiles, but also fiddled around with netting needles to find out what size of netting needle and what size of gauge stick would be necessary to make extremely fine mesh (as in one millimeter side length only - that is seriously tiny!). I have hunted for needles, and scissors, and shears, with results yet unknown. I have another hunting ground to explore, too - though I will need a tiny bit of preparation for that still. There was another go at trying to reconstruct a fillet as worn in the Codex Manesse (not finished yet, but you will get to see it once I am). There was the making of more tablet-weaving tablets, since I had run out; I am in the process of getting more spindle whorls (now looking much better than the old ones) as well as thicker linen two-ply yarn, about one millimeter in diameter and well suited to braiding, for example. I have taken photographs and updated the shop. And still managed to have a game night with friends!

So things have been crazy busy, and it's not looking like it will let up soon. So I will do what one does in these circumstances: have more tea, more coffee, and more chocolate. And settle down to work.