This silk is dyed for a couple of different projects – the top row is stuff that I’m trading, along with some cocoons, to someone who is going to embroider my Oak King into a kerchief for me.
The bottom row is the silk for that Oak King.
Well, it’s That Time!
In Spring, when a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of bugs…
Tonight’s adventure in silk management… making mawatas – silk hankies!
Howdy all!
I haven’t been knitting much lately, because I’ve been focusing on raising worms and reeling silk …
But I finally managed to bring the steel needles and the bug spit together!
The tiny silkworms continue to grow. They are entering the second instar, shedding their first larval skins. And like Tammy Faye, they have Lee Press-on Face
The Eri babies are doing well. They are quite a bit different from the Bombyx cats, which is making them intriguing and also challenging.
This project has kind of stymied my loom for the past few months. It’s OK, though – I have been so busy knitting that I really haven’t noticed. I decided to finish this up for Valentine’s Day for Chris. If you look closely, you can see that the peacock feather (which is my symbol for me) has a heart in the center. I was concerned that it would be too subtle, but I think it shows up OK. I forgot to include a penny or dime for scale; this ribbon is made of 60/2 spun silk, and is 5/8″ across. The brocade lettering and the peacock feather are all done from my reeled silk, dyed with Jacquard acid dyes.
The strapwork is double-faced, so that it shows up on both sides. The pattern area is 25 tablets across, the all-black border is 2 on each side (to keep the pattern from bumping into the edging) and then the edge pattern is 6 tablets wide, turned all one way. The background of the brocade is double-turn double-face done in plain weave.
A little closer on the ends.
Close-up of the peacock feather. The crown isn’t quite as crisp as I had hoped, but I think it still looks OK. I thought about doing a valentine heart in red, and was about 2/3 of the way through drafting out the pattern, but decided that would be too gushy.
This is a little photo-journal of the silk reeling process as I do it. I’ve raised silkworms for three years now, and this is how you go about getting the cocoons turned into thread.
