What's New
at
Appleton Studios

Another year has now passed for this, too, and we are now offering a collection of twenty-one years of our small (3" x 3") cross-stitch charts of heraldic charges. 252 (count 'em! That's 252) needlework charts of heraldic charges on a CD-ROM or USB drive at one low price for the entire collection. You can find a list of all of the heraldic charges in this large collection, and order it on CD-ROM or USB drive, here on our Needlework page. Or see our Order page for our order forms.

But after 21 years of creating one of these little heraldic charges cross-stitch charts every month, it's time for me to move on. As a consequence, the March 2024 chart is going to be my last one. The past year's worth of these free charts will remain for a little while, but they will gradually disappear one by one until they are all gone. That said, as noted above you can still purchase the complete set from our Needlework page or from our Order page (links in the paragraph immediately above).

It has been yet another year, and another milestone has been reached! Specifically, Da'ud Bob ibn Briggs, Historical Drive-In Movie Critic, has finished another year of reviewing movies set in the Middle Ages, Renaissance, or other pre-technological worlds, which have now been added to the collection, making it now 38 Years of Da'ud Bob ibn Briggs Goes to the Movies. This collection now contains 458 (No, really! Four hundred fifty-eight! Though it's a number not evenly divisible by twelve because over the years there have been a few times when your erstwhile movie reviewer Da'ud Bob reviewed more than one movie in a month; a "double feature," if you will. Or even if you won't) movie reviews, plus an alphabetical listing with the month and year in which each review was first published, and, as a bonus, a PowerPoint program, "You Might Be Watching a Da'ud Bob Movie If..." (As only one example from this humorous presentation: "If chickens are used as missile weapons ... against Roman legionaries ... You might be watching a Da'ud Bob movie." No, really! See the movie Druids, which I reviewed in December 2004.) This updated collection is available on CD-ROM or a USB drive, and can be found for sale on the Da'ud Bob ibn Briggs introductory page or through the Order Page on this website.

But while it's been a fun 38 years, it's time for Da'ud Bob to hang up his cowboy hat and keffiyah, and ride his camel off into the sunset, sit down in his La-Z-Bubba recliner, and take a load off. No, seriously, I am no longer going to be writing a new movie review every month. That doesn't mean that I won't be posting a review on this website here, only that except in very rare instances, they're going to be reruns of earlier reviews. (You did note that I now have 38 years of published reviews to pull from, right? That means, for the most part, that while these continuing movie reviews may be repeats for me, they are very likely going to be "new" for you!)

I recently heard about another source for coats of arms used by Americans: the Annual Reports of the Committee on Heraldry of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. This Committee is, of course, the same which publishes A Roll of Arms, in booklet form for Parts 1 through 9, as a hardcover book of Parts 1 through 10, and Part 11 in the quarterly magazine, The New England Historical and Genealogical Register. (Part 12 is supposed to be published in the Register beginning in sometime 2024.) The arms and crests in Parts 1 through 11 have already been included in my American Heraldry Collection, which is available for free on this website.

Anyway, as I said, I have run across a new source: the Committee on Heraldry has posted a few of their annual reports on the NEHGS's American Ancestors website, in some of which they note the registrations by the Committee of "Modern Coats of Arms" (granted by an heraldic authority or assumed by the armiger), so I've gone out and, in the instances where they have published the name of the armiger and the blazons of the arms and (sometimes) crests so registered, have added them to my American Heraldry Collection. This recently-updated Collection, consisting of a Word document with explanatory text and a listing of sources and their abbreviations used, and an Excel spreadsheet than can be search or manipulated in various ways by the researcher, can be downloaded as a single .zip file at: http://www.appletonstudios.com/American_Heraldry_Collection.zip If you have an interest in coats of arms and crests borne by Americans from colonial days up to the present, you may find this Collection to be of some use in your research.