a fine web we weave

Photo: Fred R. Conrad for the New York Times

Not one thread ever broke on the loom — it’s that strong.

Nicholas Godley, an American fashion designer living in Madagascar, remarking in today's New York Times on the textile created from the silk of the golden orb spider, which he and a colleague and a legion of assistants painstakingly gathered and wove.

That spectacular saffron color is native to the silk -- no dyes were applied.

The strength of the spider silk is no surprise, given the research that Randy Lewis has conducted into the marvelous material »

speaking of memory

Jenny Diski writes in the London Review of Books about overcoming a lifelong fear of spiders through the, in her words, stupidly titled Friendly Spiders Programme at the Zoological Society of London:

A person who is not afraid of spiders is almost by definition someone who is not me. So it is uncanny (in a properly Freudian sense of that word) to observe myself without that fear. Someway in which I knew myself has vanished. It is slightly frightening not being frightened of spiders.

And then I wonder, why not get hypnotized out of all my anxieties and nervous habits, make everything awkward and resistant go away, so that I could become... well, nothing is the alarming image I have.

I can't picture what would be left after I had chipped off the difficulties.

Jenny Diski writing in the London Review of Books' Diary in the 30 November 2006 issue.