Silk

Well, not directly related to self-protection but I hope you find it interesting anyway.

We are going to learn today how to make silk. They do have silk in Japan so I guess this is tangentially related to Martial Arts.

You start off with the eggs, and the small worms will start coming out around April, depending on the weather and latitude.

Then you feed them mulberry leaves (like a lot, because they eat like there is no tomorrow).

And one day they start to produce silk. They find a place to spin a cocoon and surround themselves.

Until the cocoons are finished.

And a few days later the butterflies come out, mate and lay eggs.

And then you store the eggs or another year.

The whole process lasts less than a month, quite sad.

And how do you get the silk?

Sadly, you need to boil the cocoons before the butterfly comes out, because to open the cocoon they need to make a hole on it, and, because the cocoons are made of one single 1.5km silk filament, to get the full length of it you can not let the butterfly come out.

No, I don't plan to have a silk industry. I will be happy to take care of generation after generation of silk worms, like I did when I was a child.

It is an interesting educative experience!

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