{"id":318,"date":"2017-09-13T16:10:00","date_gmt":"2017-09-13T16:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/2017\/09\/13\/a-spider-silk-sweater\/"},"modified":"2017-09-13T16:10:00","modified_gmt":"2017-09-13T16:10:00","slug":"a-spider-silk-sweater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/2017\/09\/a-spider-silk-sweater.html","title":{"rendered":"A Spider Silk Sweater"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\nSpider Silk<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nOn the outside of the patio door to my office is a huge
\nspider web.  I would say about 18 inches
\nin diameter and tethered  to various
\nhanging baskets.  The spider responsible
\nis an enormous orange garden spider who appears occasionally in the center of
\nthe web, otherwise I don\u2019t know where it resides, which, I admit makes me
\nnervous when I\u2019m outside.  I don\u2019t like
\nspiders at all, but \u201cGoldie\u201d is living outside and her web is so delicate and
\nintricate that I find myself looking at it often.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/a><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n                                            fabric swatch   American, cotton, c 1930<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nMany years ago I was writing an introductory course on
\nTextile History  (Textiles 101, if you
\nwill) and prepared a lecture on little-known animal fibers.  Several animals produce silk filaments, of
\ncourse Bombyx mori is the most notable, but certain mollusks, insects, as well
\nas my \u201cunfriends\u201d the arachnids.  <\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nAccording to the Roman poet, Ovid, Arachne was widely noted
\nfor her weaving skills and challenged the goddess Athena to a contest, which,
\napparently she won hands-down.  Now
\nAthena was never known to be a gracious loser and in a rage of envy destroyed
\nArachne\u2019s beautiful tapestry.  In
\ndespair, Arachne tried to hang herself , but was transformed by Athena into a
\nspider.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nAs silk producers, arachnids ( nearly 300 million years ago)
\nfar preceded the silk \u201cworm\u201d.<\/div>\n
\nThe physical properties are very impressive.  Different species produce silk of varying
\ncharacteristics.  Spider attachment
\ndiscs are made of a strong glue to secure the draglines and framelines.  Certain species produce a dragline silk that
\nis stronger by weight to steel, surpassing Kevlar.  This excellent tensile strength has been suggested that a pencil
\nthick strand of silk could stop a 747 in flight., and its elasticity is
\nsuperior to Nylon.  Some silks are good
\ninsulators, while some absorb water, and some are water resistant.  The reason insects, when in contact with a
\nweb, cannot escape their demise is as special silken thread called \u201ccribellate\u201d which forms a fine sticky mat combed atop the more substantial silk tract.  <\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nHistorically, several cultures have used spider silk
\nmedicinally , as well as for fishing nets 
\nThere have been attempts to use the silk for textiles in the early
\n1700\u2019s but the care of the living spiders proved too difficult.  Speaking of difficult, in the 1800\u2019s spider
\nsilk was reeled directly from harnessed spiders.  The military has long investigated spider silk for strong
\nlightweight materials.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nDuPont\u2019s advertisement in the Scientific American of July
\n1996 tells that they were studying these biopolymer structures of spider webs
\nby using recombinant DNA technology.  I
\nhad not heard more about this research until several years ago while attending
\na Textile Society conference, I met a retired chemist who had worked for
\nDuPont.  She told me a fellow chemist
\nhad resurrected these studies.  So
\nmaybe, we shall see spider filament for use in textiles.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nFor me, a spider silk 
\nsweater, NO WAY!!!!<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spider Silk On the outside of the patio door to my office is a huge spider web.  I would say about 18 inches in diameter and tethered  to various hanging baskets.  The spider responsible is an enormous orange garden spider who appears occasionally in the center of the web, otherwise I don\u2019t know where it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}