I know there are a bunch of computer-clever folks out there in Friends-List-Land… Does anybody know if you can put a Blog Ring link on your LiveJournal? I’m looking at a lot of cool blog rings, and I’d love to join up, but I don’t have the faintest clue how.
This is part of a fun project I’m trying, to get more experience with lace knitting (or is it knitted lace? I never remember them right…) It’s a Yahoo group, and the group’s leader releases a “clue,” part of the pattern, once a week. I finally got my yarn on Friday, so I got a chance to work it up.
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.
I’m working on a hand-fasting ribbon for friends of mine who are getting married. This ribbon will be used to symbolically tie their hands together (it’s more like draped over their joined hands) during the ceremony. It’s blue and white commercially spun 60/2 silk, double-face designs and brocade. Their names are on either end, and a little symbol with each one (his shamrock, her Bridhe’s Cross – those are done in light green brocade thread). The center is a quote from Starhawk: “She changes everything she touches and everything she touches changes”. I’ll try to post a shot when it’s finished, but this is in-progress – you can’t see the ends, because it’s still on the loom.
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.
I want to put a hit counter on the pages on wormspit.com, and I know basically nothing about them. I am using DreamWeaver to edit the site, and I know just enough about it to get the site up, but not to do anything particularly clever.
Anyone have suggestions for a hit counter? I’d really love one of the kind where I can keep track of who visits and the referring page(s), but the information I’ve seen about that involves a lot of complicated code. Is there a source for that in a neat tidy uncomplicated package?
All this usually happens behind the occluding screen of the cocoon; this is stuff that even I don’t get to see. Even when the caterpillar doesn’t spin a proper cocoon, and ends up just a bare pupa lying on the floor of the cage, I don’t get to see the moment of change – it takes about ten minutes, and I’ve never caught it happening.
Except, this time I did.
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
These are from my friend Howard in Hawaii. They are a strain of Bombyx mori that throws gold-colored cocoons. They are not the same as the kind that has the peach and gold colors; these are much more of a true chrome yellow.
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.