Silkworm raising and Silk production
- Thread starter firecrest
- Start date
Soft hands 
Seriously, it snags on every blooming rough edge
I have to spin wool in the grease for a week before hand since my hands are usually up to the wrists in mud or muck at least half a dozen times a day.
It's easy to spin though, it has such long fibres (might be easiest to do it 'on the fold' (have a google for a youtube video maybe ? to draft in fibres though if you don't do much spinning. That's probably the easiest way to keep it more like yarn than like thread.
Do you have a drop spindle ? or will you use a spining wheel ?
Thank you for the offer, but I think you'll need all the cocoons you have....it needs an awful lot of them to make thread....usually the lady who takes the filaments off the cocoons lightly winds 20 or so together to make the first thread...that's the first thread before it's plyed up to make nett silk thread, which is itself very fine.
Fascinating to see what you manage to get from the cocoons and what kind of fibre you end up with too
atb,
M
Seriously, it snags on every blooming rough edge
I have to spin wool in the grease for a week before hand since my hands are usually up to the wrists in mud or muck at least half a dozen times a day.It's easy to spin though, it has such long fibres (might be easiest to do it 'on the fold' (have a google for a youtube video maybe ? to draft in fibres though if you don't do much spinning. That's probably the easiest way to keep it more like yarn than like thread.
Do you have a drop spindle ? or will you use a spining wheel ?
Thank you for the offer, but I think you'll need all the cocoons you have....it needs an awful lot of them to make thread....usually the lady who takes the filaments off the cocoons lightly winds 20 or so together to make the first thread...that's the first thread before it's plyed up to make nett silk thread, which is itself very fine.
Fascinating to see what you manage to get from the cocoons and what kind of fibre you end up with too
atb,
M
Thanks toddy, I'll have a look on YouTube. I've pulled a few more out, about 50, and there's about 20 more , I've got surprisingly few cocoons considering how many silkworms I started off. Maybe I let them get too humid, I had to remove the dead ones into a carrier bag
But in a good way.
If I read one more " how to make a fire" thread I will scream
But this - a total breath of fresh air
Its so refreshing to read something original - thank you Linds!
If I read one more " how to make a fire" thread I will scream
But this - a total breath of fresh air
Its so refreshing to read something original - thank you Linds!
But in a good way.
If I read one more " how to make a fire" thread I will scream
But this - a total breath of fresh air
Its so refreshing to read something original - thank you Linds!
Absolutely.
Well, little update on the worms , I tried , not very successfully, to reel some silk off some cocoons that died (they stink trust me)
I placed the living cocoons neatly on paper towels, here's my whole collection, plus 'the last worm!' I've called him George. Doesn't seem to wanting to spin silk.
But this morning, the four oldest cocoons hatched
I have many many eggs is anybody wants a colony of their own. I'm going to isolate the nice yellow ones. So now the cocoons are damaged, I'm going to take the very easy route of soaking and stretching them onto a frame to make silk hankies (matawas) which can then be cast directly onto knitting needles and knitted from. I'll post a video
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I placed the living cocoons neatly on paper towels, here's my whole collection, plus 'the last worm!' I've called him George. Doesn't seem to wanting to spin silk.
But this morning, the four oldest cocoons hatched
I have many many eggs is anybody wants a colony of their own. I'm going to isolate the nice yellow ones. So now the cocoons are damaged, I'm going to take the very easy route of soaking and stretching them onto a frame to make silk hankies (matawas) which can then be cast directly onto knitting needles and knitted from. I'll post a video
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
You have to boil the cocoons for a bit to loosen the cerecin (sp?) the gum that holds the fibres together. The boiling kills the pupae, but the threads can be unreeled from the cocoons then, or the cocoons dried out in sunshine. The dried cocoons are kind of creepy....little coffins with a dried out mothy thing rattling around inside.
George is some caterpilar, but I don't much like the look of the hatched beasty :yikes:
Really good thread Lindsay You do have a go at the most interesting things
While I mind; the mawata caps make great foundations for starting felt on a mould or on your hand or foot
They're also used stretched out, layer upon layer, upon layer, to make silk quilts. Lovely stuff.
atb,
M
George is some caterpilar, but I don't much like the look of the hatched beasty :yikes:
Really good thread Lindsay
You do have a go at the most interesting things While I mind; the mawata caps make great foundations for starting felt on a mould or on your hand or foot
They're also used stretched out, layer upon layer, upon layer, to make silk quilts. Lovely stuff.
atb,
M
http://youtu.be/P_OpFgQ4HTk
This video shows the silk hankie making
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
This video shows the silk hankie making
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I stretched 12 hatched cocoons over a metal frame, it should be square really would have been easier. These are turning out quite small due to the cocoons being hatched and also I had a lot of very small cocoons. Still , I should get a result if some kind. It's all a learning curve. I have several hundred more eggs laid so I'm tempted to begin again!
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Firecrest, mad as a box of frogs but amazing to read. I have a small holding in the North East of Thailand, and there is a whole village between Udon Thani and Nong Khai that is renown in the area for its silk and it's method of farming. Because nothing goes to waste, when they boil the cocoons, the pupae then becomes feed for chickens, the chicken coops are large and raised on stilts and built over a large 40 m long pool with a depth of 1.5m, the floors are lights of bamboo pole so there is gaps in between, the chicken poop then drops into the pond becomes additional feed for the fish.
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