Fashion, anyone? Here are a few links for those of you who are in the mood for some more-or-less modern clothing (hey, it was all the rage just a few hundred years ago!)

Some Icelandic clothing, including a collar (modern-ish) and a hood (medieval-ish).

Anyone who has been looking at early modern clothes or fashion in Germany will be familiar with the Trachtenbuch of Matthäus Schwarz. There has been some work done with it recently, including the recreation of some of the items - there's a BBC article here and a blog post, with a video about the making of one of the outfits. There's more links in the blog post, too.

A prehistoric fashion show will be part of the Humanities Festival in London. (Here's the official press piece about that, with two pics - but no mention of a date.)

My list is written, the inventory is up to date, I have refilled and restocked what needed refilling and restocking, all the washing has been done (dirty tablecloths result when you use them for sorting fleece), and I have sewn a new headcloth to replace my old one which, after a few years of wearing, has given out in the place I usually wore at the forehead. I have five (smallish) sacks of wool for sale, my embroidery basket is all sorted out and cleaned, my sunhat is waiting to get some use, and I'm looking forward to a few nice days with doing textile stuff in the sun (or in the shade).

Now all that remains is taking care of some more odds and ends, including printing out some stuff, and then packing the car - which I will probably do tonight, as it's really, really hot outside these days. (So hot that our cat preferred to spend the night outside and sleeps in the cool inside during the day and most of the evening.)

It's nice that summer has come, though - and I absolutely enjoy having some strawberries out of our own garden!

Last week has been insanely busy, stuffed full with the doing of things I had wanted, or planned, to do for a long time. Not least of them my wool-display-making shenanigans! I also managed to give myself sore muscles due to willowing the washed, dried wool (yes, historical wool preparation can substitute a gym session).

This week is, normal-desk-work-wise, a very short one - it's just today and tomorrow, since Herzberg starts on Wednesday. So I am going to be quite busy wrapping up everything that needs to be wrapped up before Wed, packing my stuff, doing the last preparation for the two private workshops I will teach there (and I'm immensely looking forward to that, it's going to be much fun), and so on. The weather is forecast to be very nice, and I've already put "sun hat" on my list of things to take, along with a goodly whack of small and medium-sized projects that have been waiting for some attention for way, way too long.

I will now return to my regularly scheduled computer work... and already look forward to a few days without the machine, and with lots of nice people instead!

It has been ages since I have wanted to kickstart my woolmongering - I am in love with old wools, and even more in love with how a hand-made combed top looks and feels (and spins!). The Internet is full of other folks gushing about how a hand-made combed top looks, feels and spins as well. That taken together was the start of my offering handmade combed top.

The two wools I started out with were Rhoensheep and Racka sheep. Recently, I have also acquired two fleeces of Valaisian Blacknose, a white, longer-staple, very shiny wool that looks a bit like silk when spun. I'm offering those three wools as just washed and fluffed up a little, or as combed top. Now, hand-combed top is quite a bit of work, and thus it's more expensive than the industrially-made stuff, but it is something else to spin with really.

The only problem with my glorious plans of selling hard-to-get wools? My stall is quite tiny (as some of you might know), and the area for display is already full with all the other nice little things I have. So at first, I put up samples of the top and samples of single locks of the wool, but of course that is not the best way to sell quantities.Now I have finally gotten around to making a better display - the three wools from old(ish) sheep races, and I have supplemented them with industrially-made carded batt of Tyrolean Bergschaf and that ubiquitous "calibration standard" of the modern spinner, industrially-made Merino top. It's still being worked on (the display, not the top), but I'm positive I'll be able to finish it today. And if I can be really productive, I might even get around to shredding some of the wool that is below par to offer it as stuffing/filling wool... and that would make sack number six.

I'm also planning to offer a mixed bag with some of each wool in there, though I'm not sure yet whether I should add a bit hand-combed top as well, or just the washed wools; and how much would be a good amount. (Your suggestions, as always, are welcome!)

There will be a symposium about the textiles in the newly renovated Rijksmuseum Amsterdam in October, with lots of conservators and textile historians giving papers and an overview about the collections. The event will be on Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 October 2013, and involves curators and restaurators from the Fine and decorative arts department, the History department and external ones talking about the selection and the historical background of tapestries, textiles, costumes, kimonos and accessories, as well as about interior textiles which are used in the reconstructed 19th century style room, textile upholstery and 20th century sculpture textile.In addition, there will be lectures on the conservation, research, treatments and preparations that were needed for installation of the objects in the museum.

It does sound like a very lovely event, and registration is now possible via their website (where you will also find a link to the programme and hotel info). There's not too much information about how much medieval objects they have (and how much they will be spoken about in the conference), but my wild guess would be that the focus will be on more modern textiles - there is a lot of stunning medieval pieces in their collection, browsable (partly) online. (The English translation does not work for the actual data or the search mask - you can look for wol, zijde, katoen, weefsel, linnen to find wool, silk, cotton, fabric, linen. Or, as I did for the link, narrow down a timeframe via the advanced search.)

Writing a book can take you into unexpected directions - such as researching English medieval furniture. After hunting for it for quite a while, I can tell you that there seems to be even less material about it than about German medieval furniture (and that's not much).

So I spent the day yesterday partly in the library, hunting down books and checking them and checking out some more of them, resulting in a very heavy bag of books to carry home. So heavy, in fact, that I had the sudden urge of sweetening the load by buying some sock wool... sock wool does not count, right?

Today's agenda, thus, has more books on it - books that I need to at least skim to see if there is something useful in there. If anyone here has a hint on where to find a good, current book or article about English medieval furniture in the timespan of about 1000 to 1350, it would also be much appreciated!

I have found a nice alternative to keeping a gazillion tabs open - it's a "read later" add-on to the browser. So blog-interesting stuff (or "perhaps blogworthy") gets added into that list. Which is nice, and keeps the browser a bit more tidy, but has the downside of also growing into a long list... and that means it's time to throw links at you again.

First of all, archaeoweb.net is a collection page for all kinds of blogs concerned with archaeology/cultural heritage/museums and technology related blog, so it's a good way to get an overview about stuff that is happening in the archie blogosphere. They are collecting new blogs to add into their site as well, so if you have an archaeology-centred blog, it's double worth taking a look.

Speaking of overview: JURN is where you can search for free online e-publications. It says about itself: "A curated academic search-engine, indexing 4,507 free ejournals in the arts & humanities." It's basically running a Google custom search for you, and all the stuff it finds is accessible at no cost.

Via ancientworldonline there's mention of a new, open-access e-journal called "Living Past". While I have not found much about the journal on the page linked, there is a dissertations archive available in that same corner of the 'net, published in original language (most often Italian) and with English summaries.

If you are still reading, chances are that you will be interested in this as well: Working in what now seems to be called the "digital humanities",  sometimes calls for a programme, gadget, or other possibility to collect, process and analyse data. Bamboo DiRT is a collection of digital research tools for the arts, humanities and social sciences, and hosts a large collection of all kinds of... things for use in research.

That's it for today - have fun wasting your time finding exciting new stuff via these links!