Web Article Roundup

I sometimes stumble across an article or blog entry from months or even years ago, and wonder, “How did I miss this one?”

So here, for your enjoyment:

Maiwa’s multi-part adventure in visiting India to find the “wild” silks:

testing the silks for weaving and dye

Part One of the trip, outline

Part Two, Tasar silk in Orissa

Part Three, Tasar in Assam

Part Four, Eri silk in Orissa

Part Five, Eri in Assam

Part Six, more Eri

Part Seven, Harvesting and Spinning the Eri

….

The Organic Clothing Blog has an article with a lot of neat information, despite some small but significant errors.

….

And Bloodroot Spins had a neat blog post…

which pointed me to this article on Aurora Silk, which appears to answer some of my concerns… but well, just doesn’t. Unfortunately, I’ve seen this kind of response from Aurora Silk before – it makes a lot of distracting noise, points at interesting but irrelevant things, and doesn’t really address the meat of the issue. Making silk, at least on a production level, involves killing bugs.

The Things My Cats Drag In

Spot had a good night last night.

First, he brought in this moth.  Moth went back outside.

Then, he brought in this cute, tiny frog.  Frog went back outside.

Then, he brought in this earthworm.  I actually wondered, to start with, if he had gotten one of my composting worms… they do occasionally crawl up from their box, and he might have caught one.  Anything that wiggles, wriggles, flops, or flaps…

Only it’s not a worm.  It’s one of the world’s tiniest snakes, called a Thread Snake, Leptotyphlops_dulcis. It is SO CUTE.  It amazes me that a thing so tiny can be a reptile – it has bones, and muscles, and scales, and all the other snakey things – and it has tiny eyes that are covered with scales to protect it as it burrows underground, hunting for termite and ant larvae to suck on.

Two short videos: