Back to School and into your Cocoon!

An up and coming silkworm spinning the support silk for his cocoon

    The end of August and the beginning of September and the teenagers at my house are back to school, college, and into their cocoons.  The teenage silkworms are spinning their cocoons and I am delighted!  It signals the end of feeding their truly bottomless gullets three times or so a day.  After having raised them for years I find that I am happiest when raising a small brood of say 40 or less.  Of course one has to start with a small number of eggs and sometimes I get excited and forget, but not this time. 

And like an astronaut it does not matter which way seems to be up.  The cocoon hammock must support the cocoon completely.

    It is really amazing to watch the creation of the cocoon.  first there is an intricate and strong hammock or cradle that is spun before the actual hard core cocoon.  This serves to secure the cocoon in place so that it does not roll away, get plucked up (unless you work really hard), or blown away by winds less strong than our recent Irene.   

Inside his hammock of silk the spinning of the cocoon begins.  

    After the cocoon hammock/support structure is spun, the silkworm will proceed and create the safe and dry womb of its upcoming metamorphosis, the cocoon.

    Looking carefully the shape of the cocoon appears.  The silkworm will spin from the outside in.

Often I wonder if Chinese acrobats took their inspiration from the silkworm

    They keep spinning away; round and round and round.  If they spun their silk in a straight line a single amazingly fine filament would be 4 football fields long. 
    When they are done the silkworms will have spun a solid cocoon where inside they will begin their transformation into a silk moth.   

    This is not a chronological telling.  Since it is a cycle and therefore a life circle coming in at any stage is not necessarily a bad thing.  I will most likely tell a story next and for that purpose we must start with a cocoon. Until next time... if you are a silkworm... eat your mulberry leaves!  If you are human... eat your veggies! :)

Mama Silkworm

Silkworms in the Trees!

I've been having a lot of fun recently playing with my current batch of silkworms.  As they have been getting bigger I've had a few photo shoots.  Silkworms do not make good models when hungry since they poke their heads up and wave from side to side like little monks praying and swaying back and forth.  So of course we have the obligatory silkworms and coins photos for size (which I will show you at a later time) and also silkworms in the hand.

   So here we have a lovely silkworm on my thumb.  (Click to make photo larger)

          Recently however I have had the best time photographing them in my mulberry trees.

 They eventually climbed around a bit, but found it hard to just sit and chew on a leaf.  I think the selection was too overwhelming.


More than 5,000 years ago our friends the Bombyx Mori lived and crawled around in mulberry trees, ate their leaves, and spun their cocoons.  I am here to tell you that 5,000 years of domesticated living has spoiled these critters and they have a hard time climbing a leaf and holding on.  The idea of crawling vertically has apparently slipped their collective little minds.  Truly if they don't use the skill for 5 millenia is it any wonder that they aren't good at it.  Nope, I could not leave them on the Mulberry tree!   In fact two of the four I took outside today fell off more than once so I simply brought them all  inside after their field trip was done.  I didn't want the unthinkable to happen... they might get eaten by a bird!  Once inside they retired to their horizontal house where they are served sliced mulberry leaves upon demand. 

     The silkworms that we in general buy for classrooms or home rearing are Bombyx Mori, the white silkworm you see here that upon emerging from its cocoon will be a white silk moth.  There are however many other wild silk moths in the world.  The Bombyx Mandarina is the wild ancestor of the Bombyx Mori that is domestically raised around the world.  The website I have linked to is readable via Google Translator.  The original language is Spanish. Emilio Monadero (living in Spain) is an incredible man who has worked tirelessly to create a gene bank for this moth family,  Bombycinae.  He is working to research and preserve different varieties of the Bombycinae family.    The Bombyx Mandarina is still breeding and flying wild in a number of places.  If you look at the website you can see the differences between it and what you will see here.  I might like to raise them, but I can't since you have to be licensed to sell eggs over state lines and I don't think that we are going to be allowed to import a wild silk moth into the country.  We will have to make due with his website. ;)

     There are a fair number of other wild silk moths and I will talk about them as time goes on.


As time goes on I will put up more links, do book reviews, discuss different Silk Moth Varieties, and give some links as to where to buy fun things.  Stay tuned....

Silk is out there -- Let me Help!

What I am here for is for YOU! I am a multitude of creative endeavors: a Fiber Artist, Fiber Educator, and a real live Teacher for kids (I'm also a Mom, a wife, and I enjoy Historical Re-Creation. I teach many things in and out of various worlds, but I have an enormous love for SILK! Ask me what you will --- fiber processing - life cycle -- creative uses for various things -- and how silkworms poop! It is all important!

Although, information on Silk is much more available than it was 20 yrs ago (demand and interest has produced more study and gathering of information) it can still be daunting to gather information, learn it, and pass it on or there may be a spot that eludes a person on technique or technicality.  I've been doing this a long time and I'd like to share what I can.

I will post on average once every two weeks on general Silky subjects, but if you have an interest or a question about Silk, silkworms, their history, how to play with their fiber... LET ME KNOW!!!  I will be happy to help with lesson plans for a wide variety of ages.  This is free of charge --- let's spread the silky joy!

I do travel to teach!  Contact me at MamaSilkworm@yahoo.com

I also do Fiber Workshops (I will be teaching at Convergence in July 2012 and I teach in and around my local area of Southern CA).  I also am a Historical re-enactor so if you need a demo --- let me know!!! (I am knowledgeable and costumed in several time periods).

I am at heart an educator who has been teaching for some 20 years.  I work with a variety of ages in different educational settings (traditional and homeschool settings).  Centered in the Southern CA area I work in a variety of different locations.