First, here’s a look at the silk scarf (or belt or hairband or however the recipient wants to use it) which I entered in the Berkshire Guild Challenge. The theme this year was “Nature’s Colour Palette”. We got the results at today’s meeting. Mine didn’t get a prize, but that’s fine by me as there were 15 entries, all of them very good, and I loved the prizewinners.
Technical details: warp – 16/2 silk dyed with acid dyes, weft – Gutermann’s sewing silk, plain weave. It was sett to make it very drapey, but I think it may have ended up too sleazy and unstable. The judge didn’t say that, though, so perhaps it isn’t too bad after all.
After the meeting, we took a friend home. While we were there we got some photos of the blue tit nestlings being raised in an old cylinder vacuum cleaner ouside her house. It seems that the hole where the hose went is just the right size for the adult tits.
She keeps silkworms, and we had a look at her current ‘crop’. She doesn’t have any live moths at the moment, but she has some beautiful dead ones for display at demonstrations. She does have a lot of larvae at the moment, though. Moth-phobics are advised not to read on. :-)
This little larva:
will grow up to look something like this beautiful Suraka silk moth, Antherina suraka:
and this glorious yellow larva:
will look like this Chinese Oak silk moth, Antheraea pernyi:
These are Attacus atlas edwardsi, the Atlas moth, but she doesn’t have larvae of these this year:
WOW Jen!! I lov ethe look of that – and enjoyed all the pics too!~ Keep up the great work!~ Shell