Issue the Fourteenth: Olde Larhus
by Zabet Stewart

First let me say: yes. Yes, only three projects this issue. Yes, that's it. Yes, I'm serious.

Not for lack of material, but for lack of time. I know you all have noticed how I tend to be persistently and ungracefully behind. I've been planning this mini-issue for a while, to give myself time to work on other AntiCraft-related things, like updating errata (on the site and for the book), switching over the blog, and a hundred other small things that you'll never see but I guarantee you'll appreciate. Originally I wanted to skip this entire issue, but six months might as well be sixty years in internet time, so instead I decided to get three projects that were in-depth enough that they might count as two projects each, and perhaps that would keep you all busy enough to be forgiving.

But I didn't mean to get all ren faire. That just sort of happened, and I've got to say, this is the kind of synchronicity that makes me absolutely adore working on The AntiCraft. Yes, some things are planned, but sometimes things just come together out of the creative ether. This is what makes me feel good about facing 2009 with the staff. It's almost as if we'd have to deliberately try to fuck this up, because the collective creative unconscious is rooting for us. (What, messiah complex, me?)

Oh, and if you're curious about the issue's title: before everyone decided that to sound brainy we all needed to speak in Latin cognates and before the Norman invasion, the word for school in Old English was larhus ("lore house") and the "pseudo-archaic mock-antique variant olde is attested from 1927."† So, for this issue, we're getting medieval with banner-weaving, tunic-sewing, and dragonscale-dyeing.

Happy 2009 everyone. May the year bring you peace.

†http://www.etymonline.com/, which is a cool little tool taking info from many sources. Now, we all know I'm the OED's whore, but I only have free access to that when I'm at my day job. This is an acceptable free substitute.