Archive for year: 2005

The Mystery Stole continues to grow, albeit slowly. I have almost finished half of one “full repeat” – there will be four of these 84-line repeats to make the body of the stole. I’ve done 39 rows plus the edging.

pictures

The ribbon’s done!

The ribbon is just over three feet long including the fringes, and 3/4″ wide. With 25 pattern tablets, and 8 border tablets on each side, it has 164 total warp ends, which works out to about 218 threads per inch. It’s not nearly as fine as some of my ribbon, but it’s up there. The blue and white is 60/2 commercial spun silk, and the green is a commercial reeled embroidery thread. Nicolas and Cerra are getting married; this ribbon will be used to ceremonially bind their hands together.

Here, I tried to lay it out so you can read the whole quote. “she changes everything she touches and everything she touches changes.” It’s from Starhawk.

This shows the grain of the ribbon a little better.

Here, you can see the brocaded symbols in green. Cerra’s is a Celtic knotwork called a Bridhe’s Cross; Nick’s is a shamrock.

Here it is wrapped around my left hand. I couldn’t wrap it around both hands, and then take the picture… but you get the idea. They’ll hold hands, and the Priestess will wrap it around the joined hands, kinda like this. But not.

The kegos from the acid-treated eggs are hatching out in droves now. They have been trickling out for the past two days, and I was beginning to wonder if I had burned the eggs and would be dealing with a very low hatch rate – but they’re coming along just fine. I still can’t seem to get the desired effect from black-boxing; supposedly it can make them hatch all at once instead of piddling out over the course of four days or more. I think that maybe I’m not being patient enough, and peeking (letting in light) too frequently – or it may be that the eggs are from different days’ laying, and they’re just differently developed to start with. Ah, well… it’s all a learning experience.

When I went into the soap/silkworm room to check on the cocoons, I found this guy hanging his still-damp wings. It’s a Yamamai or Tensan silkmoth, originally from Japan.

moth shots

I’ve been reading in some of my sericulture books, about using a hydrochloric acid bath to break the diapause, and make the silkworm eggs hatch *this* year instead of next year. Well, I tried the acid wash last night.

My acid trip