It was a dark and stormy night in the hills of Madagascar. A spider the size of a human hand eats her puny male counterpart for lunch. Her web is a thing of legend, a sort of Shangri-La silk of gold.
Into this scene come spider harvesters, 80 men and women trained to gather the huge female golden orb spiders and to place them in boxes where their silk is gathered by touching a spinneret to their abdomens. The silk sticks to this and it is pulled. Two dozen spiders are placed together to create a 24-strand thread. After this day of work, the spiders are placed back in the wild unharmed. The next day this starts all over, until years of work, and millions of spiders later, there is enough thread to create a few very, and I mean VERY special items.
Have a look at this, and be sure to get to the part where this stunning fiber is being hand woven and embroidered.
More about the history of spider silk: https://daily.jstor.org/the-tangled-history-of-weaving-with-spider-silk/
I'm not sure how the recent spider silk harvesting was managed in terms of having a group of spiders together yet apart. They are cannibals after all. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!
I found a very interesting spider silk-inspired fiber being manufactured on a limited scale. I haven't had a chance to find out more about it than what the company making it has to say, but if Stella McCartney is willing to work with it, it has a big green thumbs up.
https://boltthreads.com/technology/microsilk/
Into this scene come spider harvesters, 80 men and women trained to gather the huge female golden orb spiders and to place them in boxes where their silk is gathered by touching a spinneret to their abdomens. The silk sticks to this and it is pulled. Two dozen spiders are placed together to create a 24-strand thread. After this day of work, the spiders are placed back in the wild unharmed. The next day this starts all over, until years of work, and millions of spiders later, there is enough thread to create a few very, and I mean VERY special items.
Have a look at this, and be sure to get to the part where this stunning fiber is being hand woven and embroidered.
More about the history of spider silk: https://daily.jstor.org/the-tangled-history-of-weaving-with-spider-silk/
I'm not sure how the recent spider silk harvesting was managed in terms of having a group of spiders together yet apart. They are cannibals after all. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!
I found a very interesting spider silk-inspired fiber being manufactured on a limited scale. I haven't had a chance to find out more about it than what the company making it has to say, but if Stella McCartney is willing to work with it, it has a big green thumbs up.
https://boltthreads.com/technology/microsilk/
