Lotus Fibers

When a lotus stem is snapped and gently pulled apart, it releases a few gossamer threads, sticky and impossibly fine — the raw stuff of lotus silk. Each stem gives only a little, and the fiber must be worked before it dries, so no forager gathers it in haste.

Slow to win and slower to spin, lotus fiber is prized above every common thread. In the right hands it becomes a silk that water beads off of and light seems to sink into.