Eclipse

B.’s birthday is coming up, so we went out tonight to celebrate at Pampas, a Brazilian restaurant in Palo Alto.  As we emerged from the restaurant, we noticed that the sunlight had faded to an odd gray light, as if someone had put sunglasses on the entire world.

And they had!  I had forgotten there was an annular eclipse of the sun today, reaching its maximum around 6:30pm, right around the point where we exited the restaurant.  Of course, we couldn’t look directly at the sun, but with 80% of it eclipsed by the moon, we could create pinhole cameras between our fingers and look at the thin crescent of the sun.

And, of course, the trees made their own pinhole cameras in the gaps between the leaves, which turned into the loveliest repeating crescents:

I think these would make a lovely repeating pattern for a jacquard loom – too bad I don’t have one!

Meanwhile, I have dyed and started winding off one skein of the silk tram I purchased from John Marshall.  It dyed like a dream and is winding off beautifully.  And it is gorgeous!  Because it is reeled silk that is only barely twisted, it’s unbelievably lustrous – far glossier than spun silk.  Here’s a shot of it winding onto the pirn:

The photo unfortunately does not do credit to the luster, but it does show how fine the yarn is (you can just see the yarn coming off the pirn if you enlarge the photo).  I’m guessing it’s about the same size as the 140/2 silk I plan to use as warp with it.  I’ve dyed it a brilliant red-orange using Cibacron F “Scarlet” dye, and will be weaving it with Cibacron F “Gold” colored yarn, to give various shades of flame in the finished fabric.

I’m incredibly thrilled to have access to silk tram of such quality – I’ve been looking for good silk tram for years.  And John Marshall said he now has 1600 pounds of fine silk yarn, from a Japanese warehouse that went out of business!  Not all of it is tram, of course, but it’s all beautiful. I spent a long time drooling over them in his booth.  I’m really looking forward to working with this.

But, alas, it will have to wait until after we’ve moved, which is looking increasingly like mid to late June.

Off to bed!