Entries by Michael

“Relaxed”

This here, is going to be some fucked-up political dance party. It’s going to be interesting to see how the shit hits the proverbial fan on this one. So. Retailers in the State of Texas have been selling “hemp extract” products containing Δ-8THC… under the belief that it was made legal a few years back […]

Published in The Long Thread!

When F&W Corporation bought the publishing properties that Interweave Press had worked to put together over many years – SpinOff, Handwoven, and others – many of us were justifiably dubious. F&W limped along for a while, and then declared bankruptcy, stiffing many writers on book royalties. When I heard that Long Thread Media had been […]

Hand-feeding Bees

So, a few years ago, I made a serious go at learning about bees. I studied them, I went on “smoke test” visits with bee-keepers. Chris got me hives for Christmas, and I tried… but I did not succeed, repeatedly, with bee-keeping. However, it’s given me an entirely different view on bees, and I love […]

Hitting the wall, hard.

For any of y’all who don’t know, I work as the Assistant Director for a nonprofit, non-governmentally run performing arts center. We’re a private 501(c)(3) corporation, for my nonprofit geeks. Basically, everything we do, is large gatherings of people – people come here to experience the arts, to sing or dance, to watch a band […]

Reactive Craft

I’m taking an art class. Wednesday’s session involved studying a photo of a Jeff Koons sculpture, and working to capture its various shades of white and gray with black and white paint. After class, we had lined up our pictures and were talking about how the class had gone, how we felt about the materials, […]

L. Reuteri Yogurt

A few months ago, I found this post on Wheatbelly about probiotic yogurt made using special strains of Lactobacillus reuteri. That link will sometimes lead to a paywall; here’s another post that recapitulates most of the same info in case Wheatbelly is locked. Technically, it’s not precisely yogurt, because the strains that make it aren’t […]

Her Milkshake

It brings all the boys to the yard. The female Polyphemus moth that hatched out Sunday at DFW Fiber Fest was mated last night. To ensure that I get eggs for the next generation, I make a slip-knot leash out of silk sewing thread and tie it around the base of her wings, so that […]

Butterflies make silk too.

A thing I didn’t know until I started doing more and more research about silk: butterfly caterpillars make silk too. Many of them don’t make much silk – it’s often just a little tuft, a few yards total – but it’s critically important to their life cycle. Most of the time, silk is used to make […]

Marguerite’s Trim

    I’ve been weaving some. It feels good. I wanted to do something with a little more “OMG” factor than the plain black and white cotton I’ve been doing the past few warps, so I went for some silk sewing thread ribbon. The pattern is on 25 tablets, plus 3 tablets of plain border […]