This Years Peace Silk

I have grown silk worms in the past, but this year was a little different. I purchased what was supposed to be around 600 silk worm eggs from a great silk grower in Virginia. I hatched the worms at the very end of April and soon after hatching I thought that maybe there were a few more than 600 worms, but because they were so tiny it was hard to really know.

By the end of May it was clear that I was growing more than 800 silk worms. Silkworms only eat mulberry leaves and because of this I was driving all over town each morning trying to spot mulberry trees in abandoned lots and in easily accessible areas where I could gather leaves without freaking people out in the early morning hours. My silkworms were eating bags and bags of leaves each day, and I was often feeding them up to four times a day.

Gradually the worms began eating less and began to spin their cocoons. The cocoons they were spinning ranged from golden yellow to peach and bright orange. In order to insure that each worm had the ability to hatch from its chrysalis I cut open every cocoon and transferred each chrysalis to a hatching tray. In conventional silk production the silk worm chrysalides are killed while in the cocoon in order to keep them from destroying the silk as they hatch and try to emerge. Cutting open each cocoon and removing the chrysalides affords me clean silk, and allows the silk worm to complete its life cycle of becoming a moth and mating.

I began counting as I cut open each cocoon and soon realized I had not grown 600, or even 800, but 1300+ silk worms. This explained the massive amounts of leaves I needed to gather each day. I have processed about half of the cocoons into silk hankies. These are ten inch panels of silk fiber. They are made by boiling cocoons with soap and then stretching them over a square frame and allowing them to dry. Silk hankies are easy to pull apart and spin thread or yarn from. Sadly the bright color of the cocoons washes out as the cocoons are cleaned in hot soapy water. The thread I have spun is really great. Its lustrous and has a beautiful handmade texture. I hope to weave some fabric from this silk and hand spun cotton some day soon.

I have spun some of the thread using a drop spindle, but have also spun it on my Japanese spinning wheel. When using silk hankies you need to draft the fiber out before spinning.