Living in a small mountain village just outside of Tokyo, I grow a crop of indigo every year and process the leaves into dye using traditional methods. I also breed silk moths, raise the silkworms and then reel/spin the silk from the cocoons. The silk is then dyed with natural dyes and finally woven on traditional Japanese looms. I run several ten-day live-in workshops a year at the old farmhouse here in Japan focusing on the Japanese use of indigo. Contact me for information.
Friday, 18 June 2010
My Karma is going to pay for this..
I 'll probably be born as a silkworm in my next million lives ( A rough estimate of the number of silkworms I will have raised and then killed in this life.) and for eternity face one of the several choice fates the silkworms have faced because of me.
Left alone the silk moth will melt a hole in the cocoon ten days after the silkworm had spun it in order to escape and mate. The cocoon would then be useless for reeling with breaks in the continuous fiber. So I have to kill the chrysalis. There are a few techniques. Slightly salting the cocoons to dry them. Boiling and then reeling before the moth is formed. Keeping them in the fridge for a long cold slow death or placing them on the scorching hot tin metal roof on my kitchen to dry out in the sun.
Today I used the hell-hot-roasting-roof to do the trick.
No comments:
Post a Comment