My proposal for a tablet weaving class in March of ’05 in San Antonio was accepted – and they’ve even found a gluten-intolerant person to put me up with! I’m very excited about this. It’s so cool to be teaching this stuff; it’s a technique that I really enjoy, but it’s a little on the obscure side. And it’s especially gratifying to learn that in a real-world workshop, I can actually make decent money teaching it!
Today’s lunchtime surprise: Actias Luna, the American Moon Moth
Chris woke me up out of a sound sleep this morning. I wasn’t even sure he was real, and not a dream.
“Do you have any moths hanging outside?” he asked. Muzzy with sleep, I said, “Mph? Hmm?”
“Greysie brought in a great big moth,” he said.
I have new photos and more life-cycle information on the Polyphemus caterpillars up now – rather than copy the whole thing, I’m just going to link to it.
Antherea polyphemus is closely related
to the tussah silkmoth, Antherea mylitta. It produces a very similar
silk, tan in color and very shiny and strong. I spun the silk on a tahkli spindle
into a fairly fine yarn, to make the small amount of silk go as far as possible.
“Silk Season,” the tablet-woven ribbon with reeled silk skeins that I entered into the Dallas Handweavers and Spinners Guild’s show, won the Handweavers Guild of America award! Now, I just need to get somebody to take slides of it, so I can send it in to Shuttle, Spindle, & Dyepot!
It’s spinning time!
Someone requested some larger format image files – these are pictures that I’ve posted here recently of Antherea polyphemus and Samia ricini, just in larger formats.
These are Polyphemus cocoons, Antherea polyphemus. I started with nine of them, which I got from a nice guy named Dan in Ohio. I found another one locally here in the Dallas area, on an oak tree at a park. Note: park rangers don’t appreciate people walking around with tree loppers. He didn’t say anything, but I got That Look.
And anybody who’s been following this journal, knows what big cocoons turn into… BIG MOTHS
