Our Fiber Fellow nominations were greeted with lots of votes; it seems that all of the gentlemen are popular. Since each of them makes a valuable contribution to the fiber world, we congratulate them all for their hard work and dedication to their crafts. We take great pleasure in announcing that Michael Cook is the winner of our contest for this year, and has been crowned our Favorite Fiber Fellow of the Year for 2007.  Special thanks to Barbara Greenstein for her nomination of Michael as Fiber Fellow of the Year.  Both Barbara and Michael will be receiving a memento of the occasion!

When I asked Michael how he became interested in working with silk, he explained that he learned to sew, embroider and crochet from his mother and grandmother when he was very young, at five or six years. After he learned to weave in college, a friend gave him some silk buttonhole thread and he enjoyed working with the silk, appreciating the beautiful sheen and hand of the fiber. In the mid-1990s he met a school teacher who used raising silk worms as a part of her curriculum. When Michael found some silkworm eggs on the Internet, he decided to try raising them. After a wonderful first experience in 2001, he has raised them every year since. He soon found that very little information was available about the processes of working with the cocoons, so he began to research on the Internet, and soon started buying old books about working with silk and then discovered some books from India. By working with these resources and trial-and-error experimentation, Michael figured out a lot of the techniques.

In 2004 he began raising giant moths. As many of you know, Michael maintains a beautiful and informative web site that he calls, delightfully, Wormspit.com, launched in March of 2004. Recently, with help from a friend, Sam, who is a designer, Michael has improved the site with some beautiful graphics. The flash-based graphics header for the front page is wonderful and captures the feel and theme of the site with a slideshow of pictures and unique graphics. The web site has become a valuable resource, with information about types of silk moths, articles about silk work techniques and processes, Michael's silk projects, a library of scanned copies of old books on silk work, and a valuable list of links to other silk resources. The web site receives between 400 to 1000 page hits per day. Michael has been working with Ralph Griswold of the University of Arizona to digitalize his extensive collection of public domain books about silk.

Clues for the Clueless, Michael's personal blog, also records his many projects and silk adventures. Recent projects range from reeling with a traditional Laotian set up, spinning wild Polyphemus silk, and some amazing experiments with beetle wing embroidery, along with charming knitted toys. The journal also features entries about Michael's recent travels with his long time partner, Christopher, and life in the suburbs north of Dallas with Christopher, two dogs, two cats and "his seasonal flock of tiny livestock". Michael weaves, sews, knits, makes soap, spins, draws, dances and cooks. He says he believes that "specialization is for insects". Michael has a terrific sense of humor and his entries are entertaining as well as informative. His entries receive many comments from his readers and sometimes the comment section for the entries turns into a long and interesting conversation.

Michael's talents and versatility have received both local and national attention. In 2004 he taught a workshop on silk at Kid & Ewe in Boerne, Texas; his first big silk presentation. More recently he appeared on the news in San Antonio, to publicize the Texas Folklife Festival and his participation in the event. He wrote an article for Knitty entitled "Silk is the Bomb[yx]" that appeared in the Spring 2006 issue. Most recently Michael was filmed for an HGTV television segment on "That's Clever", which will appear on January 5 at 1 PM. Step by step instructions for making the woven bookmark featured on the show appear on HGTV's web site.

Michael is certainly not resting on his laurels; he has many plans for the future. He wants to learn to weave on a broad loom and keep learning more techniques for working with silk. In January he intends to take a class on Saga Nishiki, a Japanese silk working technique. Because of the lack of good information available about working with silk from cocoons, Michael would like to soon start work on a book about silk for handspinners. Research for a book would ideally include a trip to India to see the current sericulture and industry. He also hopes to publish an article on silk reeling in a national fiber arts magazine in the near future. This spring Michael will be giving presentations about silk and cardweaving to the Dallas Handweavers and Spinners Guild and the Fort Worth Handweavers Guild, and at the Texas Discovery Gardens and the Wildflower Fiber Retreat.

It was great fun working with Michael on this article, and he really entered into the spirit of the Favorite Fiber Fellow of the Year contest!  We're proud, and honored, to have him represent Fiber Femmes as Fiber Fellow of the Year!