The End . . . Or just the beginning?

The project's done and put to bed

The last of the silk moths is now dead

The eggs are laid and put to rest

The Inn has seen it's final guest

 

The silk awaits its final spinning

It's not the end, but a new beginning :-

Hope to see you next year.

P.S.

Please forgive my crummy verse

But at least it rhymes . . . it could have been worse!

Eggs for Breakfast

Bingo!

This is her actually laying the eggs :-

This morning the two moths had separated, and, although the male was trying to latch on again, she was having none of it.  So I took him out of the box to give her a bit of peace and quiet.  Within about 5 or 10 minutes, she'd started laying lots of tiny little yellow eggs.

Lots and lots and lots of tiny yellow eggs!

Apparently, after a while, the fertile ones will turn grey.

All Change

When I checked this morning, the two moths were still attached, but an hour later this is what I found :-

The flighty little madam has swapped partners!  The first male had a black mark on it's back.  I think I'd better separate these two from the others, otherwise she's not going to have the energy to lay any eggs!

Action at Last

Well, the four moths spent all day yesterday studiously ignoring each other, so obviously they were all males.  I'd put the unhatched cocoons into a different box, and this morning when I looked, another one had hatched.  I put this one into the box with the previous four and chaos immediately took over.  All four moths were crawling around the 5th, literally like moths round a flame.

The female is the one clinging tightly to her cocoon, whilst the males throng around her :-

One by one, the males are starting to give up :-

I think the moth in the centre is trying to muscle in on the action :-

And finally, the happy couple :-

It's a messy job - look at the state of the nice clean white paper!

There are still cocoons to hatch, so who knows, tomorrow there may be more females for the remaining males.

Moths!

Yes, that's "moths" plural.  When I got up this morning and had a look, there were three more.  In fact one had only just escaped from it's cocoon and hadn't plumped up it's wings.  The first one's still alive too, so at least I now know that they'll live for 3 days without food and females.

This one looks different,  it's wings aren't as developed as the other three, and the yellow stripes could be eggs.

As this was the last one to emerge, I thought at first that maybe the wings just hadn't finished plumping, but I waited a while and they're still the same.

These are definitely males :-

At the last viewing, they're not doing anything, just all sitting separately, although one of the males has just started to vibrate his wings - perhaps he can smell the female.

More later . . .

Dyer's Chamomile

I have lots of dyer's chamomile in the garden as it has self-seeded all over the place.  I regularly pick off the flowers and dry them in paper bags then store them.  They make a really lovely bright yellow with alum.  But the one thing I'd never tried was dyeing with the leaves and stems.  Apparently it's possible to get green from them, but I didn't quite manage that, it's a sort of slightly greenish yellow.  More experimentation needed.

The silk moth is still alone - no more have emerged yet.  Yesterday I cut off the stained bit of the cocoon, and emptied out the contents :-

Lovely colour inside the cocoon.

 

and this is what was inside - the old skin, plus, I think the other bit is the old face from the silkworm.  They shed their faces as well as their skins.

Correction : it was the whole worm skin, all squashed up.

The Beginning of the End!

Just checked the cocoons, which I'd almost given up on, and look what I found :-

My very first silk moth!  I think it's a female, for two reasons : firstly, it's fat, so probably full of eggs; secondly, it's just sitting there, very quietly, not moving much - the males flap their wings a lot and generally just fuss about. You can see the cocoon she emerged from alongside, and the brown stain is what they exude to dissolve the silk strands to enable them to escape from the cocoon.  I have no clue how long she will live without a mate, but hopefully for 3 or 4 days, as it may be that long before the others emerge.

Apparently they hatch at dawn, so she'd probably been sitting there for a couple of hours before I thought to look.

I find it absolutely fascinating and amazing that a 3" long, fat, black and white stripy worm can change so completely into something so beautiful. Don't get me wrong, I normally don't like moths in the least, especially with all the wool we have around the house, but this one is so pretty!

Keep your fingers crossed for me that the rest hatch out so she gets a mate.
I can't imagine what it must feel like to be the only one of your kind, in this location anyway.


P.S.  After searching the internet all morning for photos, I've finally decided it's a male after all.  Apparently they only flap their wings and get excited when there's a female around "scenting".


P.P.S.  The other thing I got wrong was the stain - it's not the enzyme they use to dissolve the silk, apparently it's the stuff they use to plump their wings up after they've emerged.  When they've done that, the rest is jetissoned as waste.

Worms Disaster!

Well, not a total disaster, but I think I've either killed them with kindness, or they were just diseased.  Eric says no-one could have been more attentive to their needs, so it's not neglect.  Ignorance maybe.

At the moment, I have 12 cocoons (although I know for certain that 2 of the caterpillars have died inside), another 3 or 4 spinning (but very sluggishly), and I've just put the other 13 in toilet roll inners, with some leaves, and told them to get on with it!  The best I'm hoping for now is that some of them will hatch into moths, mate, and lay eggs for next year.  In the meantime, I'll do a lot more investigating on the internet and see if I can find anything glaring that I've done wrong.

Next year will be better!!!

Photos

Just a few pictures for Friday.  The first cocoon is now complete :-

 Two more worms started spinning last night in the toilet tube inners, but the rest are taking their time.

The wool I've just spun is skeined and washed :-

And look what we had in the garden today :-

I haven't seen any hoopoes in the garden for a few years, but this one was happily pecking away into all the holes between the stones in the wall, presumably eating insects.  I couldn't get any closer than this, but it obligingly turned around when I took the photo.

Wool 'n' Worms

Couldn't wait to spin the two batts I bought at the wool festival, and finished them last night.  There's about 100g here.  I've spun it as a single, thick and thin.  Not sure what it's going to be yet.

The first cocoon is substantially thicker, and another day should see it finished.  It then has to sit for a week before it can be processed further.

Another worm started to spin last night in one of the toilet roll inners I put around the edge of their plastic box.  I split the cardboard tubes lengthwise and pulled them apart a little bit so the silkworms could crawl in by themselves.  I don't know if you can see, but it's just starting to shape the cocoon around itself.

The biggest surprise though, was the worm in the "sick bay" which I thought was on it's way out.  Last night it, too, started to spin.  It's drawn a leaf around itself and is spinning inside.

Today I made a sort of open-weave framework of mulberry twigs and put it in their box for them to spin amongst, mainly because I knew I didn't have enough toilet roll inners for 70 (ish) worms.  Within a few minutes, three silkworms had climbed up onto it, so maybe that's the best option.

First Cocoon

This is a photo I took this morning, and, as you can see, it's turned into a cocoon overnight.  It's not complete yet, because it needs to spin more layers inside.  There are no more spinning yet, this one seems to be quite early.

I had a bit of a shock this morning.  Because the worm had started spinning in the basket, amongst all the other worms, I decided to leave it there and remove the rest.  Then this morning I thought I'd remove some of the leaf litter from around the cocoon . . . and found a dead worm.  I think it was probably already dead when this worm started spinning, but I was a bit worried that it might be the one which should be inside the cocoon.  And I couldn't see the worm inside because it had mostly turned opaque.  Fingers crossed!

Aaarrrggghhhh!! It's Happening!!!!!!

I've got a worm spinning a cocoon :-

This was taken at 6:30 this evening.  I'll take another one tomorrow to see how it's getting on.  The whole process takes them about 3 days apparently.

Watch this space!

P.S.  Is this some kind of record - 4 posts in one day?

Worms' Holiday

Sunday afternoon we packed a bag, packed the worms, packed a box of mulberry leaves, and set off for a short overnight break.  It was the worms' first holiday and they ate lots, slept a bit and enjoyed their new surroundings while the humans went off gallivanting.

We went to the wool festival Le Lot et La Laine which, I thought, was about an hour and a half north of here.  Wrong!!  It was really more like two and a half hours north, but then we couldn't find it and had a bit of a detour to ask the locals.  Eventually got there at 4:45 but luckily it didn't finish until 6:30/7p.m so we managed to get a good look around.

There were all sorts of different stalls selling wool, felt, books, dye stuffs, dye plants, fleece, spinning wheels, weaving looms etc., and there were demonstrations of spinning, dyeing, weaving, sheep shearing - not that we saw much of that, we were too late.

Anyway, want to see what I bought?

Well, the first purchase was these two woad plants.  My seed didn't germinate this year, so I didn't have any.

Must get those into the garden tomorrow (too hot today - 37 deg C).

And then I saw this gorgeous merino fleece and just had to have it.  It is so, so soft.

A little bit closer, to show just how white it is :-

And then I couldn't possibly walk past this, could I?  Especially when they're just my colours :-

This is a mixture of Romney, Merino, Mohair, Blue Faced Leicester, Tussah Silk and Banana Fibres (they're the shiny white bits).

The left-hand side of the second photo shows the reverse side.  They're lovely colours, really well put together.  Can't wait to start on this little lot.

I was chatting to the lady who had the Ashford stand, and she had some skeins of wool dyed with natural dyes.  One of them was done with horsetail, and was a lovely green.  So I told her about my disaster and the horrible colours I got.  Seems like I just took the plants too late in the season, they have to be picked in the early spring, but otherwise I think I did it right!  I'll have another go next year.

After the show we went to stay with some friends, Ian and May, who live near Cahors and had a really nice evening with them.  Then this morning, the worms packed their leaves and we all trundled back home where the cat was very pleased to see us.

False Alarm

Well, obviously it was a false alarm with the silkworms as I still don't have any that have started to spin.  I did think at the time it was a bit too soon, as of today they are only 25 days old.  They're getting pretty humongous, quite a few of them are two and a half inches long.  I have had a few deaths recently though, but I still have 73 (plus a sick one in the isolation ward).  This is the amount of leaves they're consuming each day (140 to 150 leaves) :-

Here are some of the worms eagerly awaiting breakfast :-

 

This photo shows the droppings quite clearly.  It's amazing how much they've changed - now they look as though they've been moulded into rectangles with a pattern on them.

Something very strange is happening on here.  This is my third attempt to publish a post.  The first two disappeared into the ether, and now this one insists on centring everything and won't let me change it.  We're off out in half an hour and I've still got to have a shower, so I think I'll leave it here and hope this time it works.  We'll sort it out when we get home.

Worm Alert!

I thought one of my silkworms was ready to pupate this morning (panic panic).  Apparently when they are ready to make a cocoon they exude a gel-like droplet from their tail end, and one of mine had some orangey-yellow stuff at the back end.  Half an hour later though it had disappeared - false alarm probably.  They still have another skin-change to go through before then.

This is how big they are now :-

They are changing as they get bigger and their heads are becoming more bulbous now.  I had to split them up again this morning, they are now in five containers.

Here are a few photos taken of the countryside around our house the other evening :-

Sorry about the boring flowers - I just like taking photos of flowers, especially wild ones.

New Camera

My new camera arrived with the visitors yesterday, so I charged it up last night and tried it out today.

Jak sunbathing, just like Aunty Vika

. . .

while the men get on with the important things in life :-

Note the beers!

The worms are still growing . . .

This one's just escaped from it's old skin for the third time :-

I took a video of one of the worms this afternoon and then tried to upload it to here, but it didn't work.  I'll have another try tomorrow, got to make dinner now.