Entries by Michael

Lao Silk Article in SpinKnit

I’m fascinated with some of the new avenues that publishing is taking.  I wrote an article for the Winter 2011 edition of Interweave’s new electronic fiber-arts magazine, SpinKnit.  It has cool little galleries for pictures, it has video (not my article, unfortunately – I had trouble trying to record video properly – but some of […]

The Spice Girls

I got a new cell phone (an HTC Inspire 4G), and decided to take a few shots to see what kind of quality it gets in photos.  It has an 8MP camera and an LED flash, but only a tiny lens, so depth of field and focus aren’t amazing – but it’s not bad. A […]

Prometheas – third and fourth instars

This is what they looked like a week ago, on 8/31: This is the third instar; the thoracic tubercules are spiky, but not actually very sharp, and they’re bright yellow.   Most of the time, this happens on a twig, and it’s very difficult to see – I’m lucky that this time, a couple of […]

Hot Chickens, Cool Caterpillars

The chickens are holding up OK in our record summer heat. We did lose one to heat stroke, early on… one of the young roosters was trying to be close to Momma while she was trying to lay an egg in the middle of the afternoon, and it was just too much. I set up […]

Promethea – second instar

The Promethea caterpillars are changing to second instar. They’re seven days old. They have not all shifted yet – they may have hatched across two days, or some may just be a little delayed. You can see that the remaining first-instar caterpillars are smaller, and also yellower than their second-instar siblings. You can see – […]

A New (to me) Moth – Promethea

The Promethea moth (Callosamia promethea) lives in Texas, but not the part where I live – they want the far-eastern reaches of the state, up against Louisiana. They have a wide range in the eastern US, all the way to the Atlantic. These are the eggs after hatching. They remind me a lot of the […]

Teenage Chickens

The chickens are growing up fast! They’re eight weeks old today.  They will spend long periods of time some distance from their momma, although they still tend to hang out with her when the other hens are around, and she’s still feeding them and gathering them up into the coop at night.   We’ve quite […]

Hatching Day

Chris got me a new camera for our anniversary; a Canon T2i.  I’ve been playing around with the new camera, looking at some hatchling silkworms. This one’s in the process of hatching.  They bite through the egg shell, bit by bit, and then crawl out.   The lenses on the new camera are working for […]

Please Vote for our Idea!

The Sammons Center for the Arts,  the amazingly cool place where I work, is part of the Refresh Everything Pepsi Challenge.  Our idea is a Family Arts Festival; we want to introduce people to the Arts. You can vote online here, and you can also text 106158 to 73774 from your cell phone.  If you […]