Time marches on!

I must now go and see if I can work out why one of the lams on my loom has popped out - wondered why weaving my indigo silk scarf was suddenly such hard work!


I'm continually frustrated by being unable to capture the wonderful turquoise of these caterpillars, but this picture isn't too bad as far as colour goes.
Close up of moth pairing

Not much has appeared on here recently as I've been extrememly busy with all sorts of interesting things, including two wonderful days in my studio with designer Luiven Rivas- Sanchez (http://www.luiven.com/), dyeing fabrics with natural dyes. He had explored yarn dyeing but was interested in fabrics and we produced some gorgeous colours on silk muslin, ramie, linen and cotton velvet. He has posted about what we achieved on the blog page of his website.

Before Luiven, I had a lovely time (and this is work?!) with two Dutch ladies, Dineke and Alet, who came and did creative yarn design with me. They achieved some really excellent design work and yarns with me, did some monoprinting with David Lister, a fellow artist at Duchy Square Centre for Creativity, and we spent a relaxing and fascinating day with Lesley Prior at her farm (devonfinefibres.com) admiring her wonderful Bowmont sheep, cashmere goats, and angora goats.

Mustn't forget to mention the highly successful Fibrefest
either. Despite the weather and the very soggy floor in the marquees, it was a tremendous event and Coldharbour Mill is such a good setting for a textile event.

I have a pretty full week of teaching coming up, so thought I should update the progress of the caterpillars. The Robin babies are growing very fast now and are almost ready to spin - at least the older ones are. The a.yamanai have all eclosed and are a bit slow about mating - I have males and females, but they don't seem to want to do what comes naturally - maybe the unseasonably cold weather has had some effect? A. peryni, on the other hand, have been pairing with enthusiasm......

Blue babies

No, not those poor little souls with heart problems, but the Robin babies. They have this most gorgeous turquoise tinge to them at the moment, particularly fetching with their blue spiky bits - they are like multicoloured punks! I h ave a couple of photos that, though slightly out of focus for most of the cat, the blue is quite true to life.

I went to feed the mob the day before yesterday and was thinking that probably it would be a good idea to put the Japanese Oak Silk Moth cocoons in the fridge till spring - telepathy must have been in play because as I looked in the cage, I noticed a male has emerged, hanging hopefully onto a cocoon that I assume holds a female. She is taking her time about emerging! I think the Chinese had better all go in the fridge as I don't really want to be overrun with moths just at the moment! I have a baby of baby Chinese cats coming along nicely.