"To Keep Them Sweet": Progress, of a sort.

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The ribbon is proceeding slowly onward. I encountered some serious problems (mostly tension, although a couple of missed turns also contributed) and had to start the ribbon over. It hurt, but it was truly for the best. At this point, I’ve gotten through most of page 7 out of 15 pages of chart (plus a moth on each end) – I had stopped the first one after four pages. It’s definitely taking on the feel that I’m aiming for – the lettering looks much more regular this time around, and the brocade looks a little more fully covered because of the changes in tension.

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Found: US source for Pony needles!

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The folks at Pony told me that Kirstin at Muench Yarns carries their needles. I checked the Muench Yarns website, and was only able to find their KNITTING needles… but after a couple of emails, I got in touch with Kirstin herself, and she does indeed have them! She has the 9, 10, 11, and 12 sizes, all in the gold eye.

From her email:

I do have the Embroidery Crewels in sizes 9,10,11,12 in stock. They are with
a gold eye. Funny, I do not remember anymore why I have them, I believe it
was a special order, but I thought to order 500 each extra at the time.

I am a wholesale distributor, and do not sell directly to the public, so I
would need to have any inquires go directly to info@muenchyarns.com where I
would set up a customer service person to handle the needle inquiries.

The prices are as follows :
Size 9- 16 needles per package $1.50 each pkg of 16 needles
Size 10-16 needles per package $1.50 each pkg of 16 needles
Size 11-12 needles per package $1.50 each pkg of 12 needles
Size 12-12 needles per package $1.50 each pkg of 12 needles

So! Anybody who wants to get the Pony crewel needles, she’s got them, and they’re inexpensive, and they’re in the US!

Needles in macro

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The needle on the left is a Richard Hemming #10 crewel; the one on the right is the Pony Brand #10 crewel. It looks like it’s a little finer, and the head is significantly finer.

These are the three sizes – #10, #11, #12. I’ve put the pointy ends even, so you can see how much they differ in length.

The Geffe Ribbon: begun

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I’m working on the Geffe ribbon; I’ve gotten through nearly four pages of chart (counting the moth, which ought to be more like 2 pages because the two-color brocade takes FOREVER on 73 tablets!)

I’m pleased with how the beads are working out. They’re strung on the main weft, which is a bit of a pain in the butt – I strung on about 20 of them, and they keep wanting to get in my way.

Close-up of the moth. It’s in two shades of ecru; I had planned originally on just one shade, but when I started fiddling around with two, I liked the look. I think it’s worth the trouble, although only just. This is my hand-reeled filament, made from 4 reel strands – or about 80 cocoons thick.

I’ve still got about 13 pages of chart, one of which is the moth on the other end – so there’s a long way to go! I’m working from the left-hand side of the graph below; I just finished the word “sweet” in the top line.

Needles: I LOVE getting packages from India

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I’ve often heard of things being “nested like Chinese boxes” – but what I get, are these nested packages from India. I don’t think I’ve ever had anything so thoroughly packaged, as the things I get from India. This time, it’s needles. I wrote to the folks at Pony Needles in India, and asked if I could place a small order. I couldn’t find anyone here in the US who carries their amazingly fine crewel needles (see this post) – except for Lacis, who carry the #12 in the plain eye.

They explained that they don’t do small orders, only wholesale – but then a manager emailed me and told me that he was impressed with my silk site and my devotion to needle work, and he sent me a shipment of needles with his compliments. I was SO excited!

What I saw first, was this:


– the Express packaging.

click for what's inside

The Peony: finished, finally!

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It’s finally done! I have to admit – the leaves have a little bit of experimentation going on, partly because I was trying to figure it out, partly because I was just tired of working on this piece. I glued it to the mat under tension with PVA bookbinder’s adhesive, and put mat on front and back to keep it under tension in the frame.

Images archive: Luther Hooper's SILK

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These images are from a PDF of Luther Hooper’s “Silk: Its Production and Manufacture.”

These are all out of copyright, and available for use, to the best of my knowledge. These make great spinning-dyeing-weaving clip art.

If you do use any of these, please save them to your own server.

LOTS more pictures – including weaving, dyeing, twisting, and insects… Read more

Images Archive: Pasteur

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There are a lot of old silk-related books that are available as PDF’s online.  I’ve gone through and pulled out some great illustrations.  These are out-of-copyright, and free for use, to the best of my knowledge.  I didn’t get ALL the pictures – I admit I picked the ones I liked, and ones I thought I would use. 

If you want to use these for your own use, please save them to your own server.


LOTS more pictures… Read more

Silk Educational Handouts

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These are handouts about silk and silkworms that I use when I do educational presentations for schools, museums, and fairs.

One is aimed at younger kids, with more pictures and simpler wording: ; PDF file, 739K

The other is aimed at adults or older kids, with just a couple of pictures and a lot of dense text: PDF file, 40K

The kids handout is so much bigger because of the images.

These print out as a double-sided page, or two single pages.

The photographic images are my own photos; the line drawings are taken from out-of-copyright books I found on the Web.

The handouts may be used for educational purposes, as long as they are printed complete and without alteration.

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It’s happened once before – that time, a Hungarian cool-photography website posted a link to my silkworm rearing page, and the course of a single day, the site got nearly five thousand hits. It didn’t have any really directly visible results, other than a spike in my hit numbers, but when they went back down, they didn’t go quite as far as they had been – routine traffic went from 200 – 300 hits per day to 500 – 600. It’s stayed up since, spiking after things like my article hitting Knitty, a print mention in “No Sheep for You” (thanks Amy!) and a couple of magazine articles.

At some point early this morning, a user posted a link to my Cecropia page on a website called reddit.com. Traffic surged upward – it was close to five thousand by the time I got to work.

Now:

If you can’t read the tiny numbers, it was just over fourteen thousand, at twenty minutes to two in the afternoon. By the time I typed this in, just at two, it had topped fifteen thousand.

Ironically, I can’t even put the photo on my website – because the website is crashing occasionally because of the traffic. It’s still there, and I’m not hitting a bandwidth threshhold or anything – it’s just swamping the server.

A lot of them are just fly-by’s, but still!

Oh, and unrelated (I think) – I got an email this morning from a French researcher who wants ultra-light harnesses (!!!) for butterflies (!?!?). The tether has to be less than .1 gram per 30 meters.

I can reel that.