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!

So... now for the catching up. (More or less, that is.)

There's a MeDaTS meeting (the autumn meeting) in October, as usual in the British Museum, and the topic is "Well Worn Weeds: Underclothes, Linens and Vegetable fibres worn next to the body". It's on Saturday, 27th October 2012, and you can see more details including conference fee and contact data here. Now, if I were in London...

The CfP for the International Conference “Theory and method in the prehistoric archaeology of Central Europe” is already past, and there's bound to be a programme up soon. The event is 24^th–26^th October 2012 in Mikulov (Czech Republic), the sessions are already fixed and described on the website, and registration for participants is open.

Meanwhile, we are finishing the last behind-the-scenes detail planning for the Textile Forum, I have an article to finish off and a presentation to structure (and it is giving me a hard time, unfortunately). And the cat may have asthma. And to top it all off, Facebook is making me get timeline. Gah. Which means I will have to hunt for a cover photo... just what I needed, another excuse for procrastinating.

I had a wonderful, fun summer break, and now I'm returning to work - the Textile Forum is creeping up and needs some attention as well as some other stuff (as usual).

The weather is still beautiful though, more inviting to have ice coffee in the garden than working. It's a good thing I can sit in the open wintergarden for work and at least enjoy the warmth and fresh air outside, and watch the birds eat the half-ripe kernels from the sunflowers! There's whole flocks of them on one flower at some times. The first few chilis are also ripening, and we have already munched quite a lot of tomatoes and mini-cucumbers (melothria). And there's even a melon going to be ripe soon. (The downside of all that garden joy? Being away for some time and not keeping up with the weeding means catch-up work has to be done there as well. Fortunately it can be done while munching tomatoes and cucumbers...)

I will be taking the summer break that I have hinted at, and thus there will be no blogging for a while. It's time for me to relax and recharge the batteries, and to take some time off for blogging so I can write again with vigour (and less braindead-ness) after my return.

I hope you will all have a lovely summertime with sunshine, nice weather, fun and relaxation!



Regular blogging will resume on Monday, August 13.

I feel... braindead. Like I could really, really use that summer break. So it's a good thing that it's coming up!

And since my brain is already more or less in shutdown mode, here's a pic instead of words.

"I can has Friday?
...
What do you mean YOU HAVE NOT MADE IT BE FRIDAY YET?"

It's summer, and I will be taking a break from work, starting the end of this week. This is really nice, and I am very much looking forward to it - although there is a stack of stuff left to do before I can go with a good conscience, so the next few days will be devoted to that.

And then... time off! Relaxation, hanging out with friends, and going for a swim whenever I feel like it. Hooray!

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!