We went out a ways into the country side to visit a silk farm.

We found it very interesting, we all know what the finished product looks like but you never really think about the process from the moth to a finished piece of silk.

This is the life cycle of the silk worm; they boil a certain percentage of the larvae for the silk and leave the others to procreate.

They cut the leaves from the mulberry trees for the little guys so they can eat a lot...get fat and spin a cocoon.

Here is a close up of the larvae, put aside for boiling.  Our guide indicated that the larvae made for a good lunch, I still don’t know if he was having us on!

The fat little worms are placed on the tray so they can start to spin their cocoons, are protected and can be observed.  They have two glands on either side of their head that produces liquid silk, the glands are called spinnerets!

Oh dear, boiling time – this is done to soften the fibres so she can take the strands using a needle at the end of the stick and turns the strands of silk onto the wooden reel.

You can see the strands of silk that are pulled from the cocoons and wound onto the reel.

They are spinning the silk strands onto spools to make bundles of silk; they spin them using 3 to 10 strands.  The next step is to either send them off to customers around the world or as we got to see the whole process to the finished product.

Putting the dyed silk onto large wooden spools to be made into books, and then they are ready to be woven into a shirt, etc.

You can see the strands going from the loom to the spools.

This gives a better perspective of the process.

Gathering the dyed silk into bundles to be used to weave something wonderful.  There was no dying going on during our tour, so unfortunately I didn’t get any photos of that process as well as the types of dyes they used.

Bundles of silk ready to be used in the weaving process.

Getting the loom ready this is the pattern that will be used.

Lots of weaving going on, they had a really nice shop to show off their finished products.

Viola!  A table runner.

His and her’s silk outfits.