Shot Silk And Sapphire Spiders

You’ll find my attempt at a post with this title, as suggested by Rosaria Delacroix via our blog post title trade! Read more about the initiative, or contact me if you’d also like to trade!

As soon as I received this prompt...it made me pause. What’s shot silk? And sapphire spiders? An evocative phrase, yes, but does such a thing exist? To the Wikipedia archives!

I learned two things today. The first is shot silk’s definition. It’s fabric woven with warp threads of one color and weft threads of another, creating material that changes hue depending on how light hits it. Blue from one perspective, purple from another.

The things you discover! I believe I’ve seen such fabrics before, but never did it occur to me it was a specific technique, let alone one with a name.

And of sapphire spiders...I did some searching, and the closest thing I found was the bold jumping spider (Phidippus audax) with its chelicerae (mouthparts) which are often iridescent blue. Did you know? They don’t build webs, and they have excellent spatial awareness.

I guess the next thing that comes to mind is other substances that shift colors. Labradorite stones that flash from gray to blue to green. Butterfly wings that aren’t blue at all, but create that color through structural interference. Shimmering beetle carapaces.

Perhaps there’s a metaphor for most things refusing to be just one thing in there somewhere?

And, now I think about it, what fascinates me about these phenomena isn’t just their beauty, but what they reveal about perception and reality. If you have visuals, what you see depends on your position, the light quality, and the angle.

I guess they’re also metaphors for perspective. Truth changes depending on where you stand.

And it applies to storytelling too. The best fiction reveals different facets depending on who’s reading and when. Prose that seemed unremarkable during your first reading becomes profound when you return to it years later.

This refusal to be just one thing feels precious in a world that demands certainty and clarity. Humans demand knowability, yes, but we’re also drawn to mystery.

I try to bring this nuance into my writing. Not ambiguity, but a richness. Subtext.

Because if you think about that sapphire spider. Some folks, as they pass, if they see it at all, when asked to describe it, might only mention it was black. And that description isn’t wrong.

There’s a concept called mutable beauty: impermanence and changeability aren’t flaws but essential qualities. Perhaps the same is true of meaning. Ideas that shift and change aren’t less true than fixed certainties, but more true. A better reflection of reality.

So I’m trying to collecting them, these shot silk moments.

Because if there’s one thing I need to learn, it’s finding joy in nuance.

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