Kai's entry:Today we did something really cool. We went to an old shop where they made silk by hand. Before going to this old fashioned factory, I had never seen silk worms except at the bug zoo in Victoria.
The first thing we saw in the factory was an old fashioned loom. A Vietnamese woman was showing us how each strand of silk got woven into a scarf. This loom (left in the picture) would make three whole meters of material in one day if you kept at it. Now I know why silk is so expensive.
Before they took us upstairs to show us the rest of the silk production, they showed us how to weave straw mats in a similar way. They used another kind of loom (see picture below).
The next thing we saw was the silkworms. They showed us two batches. Some were smaller, some were bigger.
The smaller ones were fed mulberry leaves every three hours and this was the same with the big ones. It takes a week for them to reach full size.
Each silk worm makes a cacoon of silk around itself and they would turn into a moth if you let it.
The cacoons are stored in a dry place.
The people boil the cacoons in hot water so that the silk can easily unravel.
A bunch of threads from different cacoons are fed into a machine (see picture below). The machine makes the strands into threads of silk if you turn a crank.
I got to turn the crank and really enjoyed making the silk. The silk then gets dyed for making into material.
Nothing goes to waste because they eat the pupa's. I learnt a lot about making silk today.
By Kai Pama
Nicely done Kaiser Chief!!! Glad to see you're having so much fun, must say your blog was an educational experience for me, I had no clue how silk was made!!!!
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