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At the Crow again – but this time, at NIGHT!

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Originally published at WormSpit. You can comment here or there.

This Friday, February 20, I’m going to be at the Crow Collection of Asian Art.  I do a lot of demos there, but this one’s a little different – they’re doing a joint presentation with the Dallas Museum of Art’s Late Night program.  So people will be going back and forth to both museums, with hands-on kids projects, Lion Dances, oud music, belly dancing, coffee tastings, wine tastings… and me, reeling silk and talking about silkworms.

I’ll be there from six to ten PM.  Usually, they put me in the second-floor Jade Room… but some of the arranging is still up in the air.  When I was there two weeks ago, I spoke to most of a thousand people in the course of three hours.  For more information, click on either of the links above!  Admission at the Crow is free; admission at the DMA is $10.  If you want to see the King Tut exhibit, that’s extra.

This is the room they usually put me in, but without the benches in the middle.

Gimme spools

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Originally published at WormSpit. You can comment here or there.

I’ve been working at getting ready for SOAR next month.  One of the things that I absolutely have to have, is cool, small presents – I’ve always found that I make wonderful new friends at events like this, and I want to give them little mementos.  It has to be something very cool, something very ME, and something they can actually get some use out of.

So, I now present: Gimme Spools!

A handful of samples. I will have more colors - but these are the prototypes

I had thought about getting spools like the ones I keep in my embroidery box, but (a) they’re almost $.50 each, which adds up when you want to hand something out like candy, and (b) they’re a special order item, so it could be a few weeks to get them here.  I figured out that if I printed my information four-up on a piece of quality acid-free paper, I can cut them down and roll them up to make little quills.

An extra-nice touch – I can use my electric winder, which turns a very tedious winding job into a quick zip.

They're a fairly convenient size. If I were just using them for storage, I might make them a little shorter.

They’re a fairly convenient size – if I were just using them for storage, I might make them a little shorter.  They’re not as strong as the Glimakra quills, but they’re pretty strong.

They've got my information on them, like little business cards.

I like the fact that I can put all my info on them, like little silky business cards.  They’re sealed with tape, which makes a nice smooth edge.  Glue stick was too imprecise to make the edge clean.

The cream colored ones have about 100 yards or so of raw silk; the colors are about 10 yards of embroidery tram.

The colored ones have about 10 yards of embroidery tram, which would be enough to embroider an initial or a small flower.  The cream ones are a bunch (100 yards? I didn’t measure) of raw silk filament, which could be thrown to make a small skein of almost any kind of yarn.  I’m honestly not sure which people would like more.  I’m hoping that people don’t decide they want one of each color… I can’t make enough for everybody to have a set.