Craft Corner: Spider Silk Thread

Just in case you have a lot of free time on your hands and a handy supply of 3-5 foot webs in your yard, Boing Boing featured an article today on how to spin your own silk from spider webs. If I had the time (and the source material) I would totally do this. Spider silk is stronger than steel and can stretch to 40 times its length. Plus, imagine the Goth cred I would get for a little black dress woven from spiderwebs?

Here's the Instructables page that details the steps:
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-Spider-Silk-Thread/

And, even cooler, people in Madagascar have actually woven a piece of silk that looks like something from the set of "Lord of the Rings":
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/spidersilk/





The AMNH article discusses how the spiders like to weave webs between telephone lines in Madagascar. This phenomenon also occurs in Viet Nam. I saw enormous webs spun between power lines all along the highway from My Tho to Can Tho. The picture is below. The spiders in the webs were large enough to show up in the picture and at the distance I was from the power lines, that makes them at least 4 inches across.

Craft Corner: Spider Silk Thread