Wrong!  They loved the fresh food and showed no sign of slowing down.  I drove to my friend’s 3 or 4 times to steal branche prune her tree.  Just a few silkies were showing signs that maybe, just maybe they would start spinning soon, but this was getting old fast.  So I starting looking around the neighborhood.  Just a couple blocks away, in a vacant lot next to a church yard I spied a pair of mulberry trees.  YES!  The silkies seem to like the new leaves well enough, but still most weren’t cocooning up.

A few did start to change.  Toilette paper tubes make nice places for the worms to settle down for a spin.  They start by anchoring a few threads and then make a comfy hammock.

Then they keep spinning untill they have a nice safe cocoon.

Unfortunately, most of my silworms did not ever pupate.  Out of my 500+ worms that made it to the fifth instar, maybe 10% spun cocoons and some of those were on the thin side–the worm clearly died before finishing.  The rest just kept eating until they wore out and died.  I suspect my neighborhood trees may have been sprayed.  I’ve seen tent caterpillars in the area and I know some of the sprays they use for that are grow inhibitors that might prevent molting or pupating.  I would like to try this again, but not until I have my own mulberry tree that I know is safe and I might want to hatch out fewer caterpillars!

Next: Mothra emerges

I thought I had posted this last week, but appartently the blog gremlins have eaten my words.  Well, there is still over a day and a half left on the sale!

Come visit: Kate’s Cauldron

I think it is most common to use a pair of combs, but I wanted to try a comb and mini-hackle set.  Here’s mine partially loaded with some belly wool from a friend’s shearing.  I dyed some purple a while back, but I think I overhandled the wool in the dye pot.  It’s fairly matted.

BUT….it came out nice didn’t it?  Almost half of the total ended up as waste wool, but it won’t really be wasted.  I’m saving it up for carding.  I guess there would be less waste if: 1. I hadn’t abused the wool while dying, 2. It had been off the TOP of the sheep, lol, and 3. I actually had more than 30 seconds of wool combing experience before this.

Useless trivia fact:  St Blaise, patron of throats, was martyred by being attacked by wool combs (and then beheaded for good measure).

You can just barely see the first hatchlings.  The eggs are just little dots.  They lighten up a bit before hatching.  The new worms look like tiny black maggots and are maybe 1/4 inch long. These first ones hatched a week ago, on Friday afternoon.

Only 5 had hatched by the time I should have gone to bed.  I was nervous, having heard that they need to eat within 4 hours, so I got up in the middle of the night to check on them and sure enough, the mass hatching had started.  I put the hatchlings on some food and brushed the rest of the eggs close to the food.  By morning most were hatched

At this stage they are pretty gruesome little things.

These are about 4 days old.  They’ve lightened up and plumped out.  Most have white heads with black faces and tannish bodies.  The skins on a few have started looking kind of stiff and maybe a bit translucent. Almost time to shed their skins, I think!

Day 6 and I think almost all of these have molted.  I only saw one actually shed it’s skin and there don’t seem to be any old skins lying about.  Did they eat them?  All the wormies are plumper now and about a half inch long.  The white heads are more pronounced and the bodies are a soft dove grey color.  Much less gruesome, don’t you think.

So far I have had noticeable fatalities and I think at least 90% hatched.  They are still small enough that I don’t want to try and count them.  Maybe in another molting or two.  Wish me luck!  I want to spin some homegrown silk.

Come on by and say, “Hi!”  I’d love to meet you.

And check out Heathers shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/Heathernwells

I especially like the breakfast charms.  Okay I really like her desert charms, but I’m I’m afraid I’d go crazy craving chocolate if I wear them!

I was asked to post some photos of my cleaning process.  I’m no expert, and my piecemeal batch cleaning is certainly not the most efficient, but it works for me. Here is the before picture:

Now this is from last year’s shearing and I had been warned that the lanolin has harden up, so I knew it would need a good bit of cleaning.

Not having anywhere to safely dry a whole flleece at once, I like to clean it in batches.  So I fill up a wash basin with my hottest tap water and add a couple squirts of dish soap (make sure it doesn’t have enzymes).  My hot water heater is set above the code limit (please don’t call the housing police on me!).  If you are at the typical 120 degrees, you might want to add a kettle of boiling water.  Then gently add as much fleece as seems to want to fit.  You really shouldn’t agitate it at all.  I’ll help it sink with an old chpstick (okay, I do swish it a little, but that is WRONG—don’t do that. lol). 

After about 15 minutes, it looks like this:

Doesn’t That look lovely?  No?  Well it smaells just as nice!  Lift the wool out into a strainer (I keep one just for fiber now).  Meanwhile, dump the dirty water, and refill with water just as hot.  Add more dish soap and put the wool back in.  It’s important to change the water while it’s still hot.  If it cools too much, the lanolin will redeposit and re solidify.

I look through the fleece as I return it to the soapy water and pick open any nasty, mucky tips.

Let it go for another 15 minutes or so.  The water is still dirty, but NOTHING like the first bath:

Sometimes I’ll give it a third wash–again sorting through for any icky tips to tease open), but this was looking pretty good, so I left out the detergent on the next bath (yup, lift out the wool, refill tub and resoak).  15 minutes later:

Repeat with one more rinse (more if you need it):

The wool have washed up very soft, with a bit, but not too much vegetative matter.  It’s mostly nice and white, but some yellowed tips.  I was expecting that, since the fleece had sat for so long unwashed.  I’ll save those bits for the dye pot.

This is the wool about half dry.

I have heard it is a good idea to add a splash of vinegar to the rinse water (wool likes a lower ph).  You can also add conditioneer to the final rinse.  I haven’t done either of those, being fundamentally lazy. 

I have heard of a cool step saver recently.  Apparently, you can use your dye bath for the final rinse.  That makes so much sense.  You need to presoak your wool before dying any way, so if you put vinegar in the previous rinse water, you’re all set to put the fibers into the dye pot.  I’ll have to give it a go soon!

Look what I made!  Last week, I added a couple spindles to my etsy shop.  I had an inquirey that inspired me to check out my local wood resourses and this was the result.  I love making this carved spindle tips.  This one is tiny, maybe a 1/2 ounce with a lacewood whorl and a cherry shaft.  Probable best for laceweight.