Mulberry Saplings

Last year I planted some mulberries. (The actual black berries.) One year later I have three hundred mulberry saplings taking up a lot of space in front of my house. They look great and smell of a productive future. I will plant them in a new field near my house next spring. Today I trimmed off all the secondary branches and fed the trimmings to my 1700 hungry friends.

Wet Bamboo Silk Rearing Trays in the River.

To prevent sickness with the silkworms it is important to disinfect all the equipment after each group of silkworms.

I used to wear a full rubber rain gear suit and a proper gas mask and spray the silk rearing room as well as all everything imaginable that would come in contact with the silkworms with a strong formaldehyde solution. I used to dread it. Sweltering hot and humid Japanese summers in a rubber suit. I once made a mistake and went in the room a day early after closing it down or a few days to open the windows to air it out. I was in the room less than a minute but I managed to burn my lungs and I was in the hospital a few hours later. Barely able to speak, it was a challenge to tell the doctor that I had breathed in formaldehyde fumes while disinfecting for my silkworms in broken semi-delirious Japanese.

A lot can go wrong. This is my 14th year in the silk business and I still have to manage one thousand minute details to make the whole process go smoothly. Is it worth it? Hmmmmm.

I am not rearing the numbers I used to so I just spray and wipe with a disinfectant. I alternate rearing areas between my house and the studio just down the driveway so I don't have to worry about disinfecting too much, giving each spot a year to rest.

All the bamboo trays and shelf frames get hauled down to the river and I spend day scrubbing and just enjoying the water. The waterfall washing area is only a hundred or so meters directly down from my doorstep, but this is the only time of the year that I really get in there and enjoy it. I can hear the waterfalls year round twenty four hours a day. Nice. Far enough away not to feel any dampness in the house but I can still enjoy the sound.

If you keep the silkworms environment spotlessly clean and well aired there isn't that much of a problem with sickness. The weather can be humid and sticky this time of year. A few rain showers and wet mulberry leaf can turn the whole process into nightmare pretty quick when raising over 10 000 silkworms. A lot can go wrong besides the weather. Too much nitrogen fertilizer on the mulberry field and the worms get weak. Low temperatures at the wrong time and the worms kind of implode on the silk liquid that can't flow properly. Too much formaldehyde on the cocoon spinning equipment and the worms stop spinning and try to escape but they are too weak to go far. What a mess.

Going going gone...

There is only one silk farming house left in my area besides myself. This is the last year they will raise silkworms. I'll try to document the elderly couple's work this year as it will be last chance to see the process. Only 40 years ago practically every house in this area was producing silk. The last one... I visited yesterday and took pictures of their kaitenmabushi. The are just finishing a batch of 54 000 silkworms.

Silkworm Eggs Hatching

I have about 1700 babies in the house right now. Each ring of eggs has about 450-500 eggs. A metal cup is placed over the moth so that she doesn't walk all over the place laying eggs. The following spring it is easy to calculate how many silkworms to raise by counting the rings and letting the amount needed to hatch.

Dying with Four-Wing Evening-Primrose

An old friend dropped by the shop and asked if I had ever dyed with Tsukimiso (Moon Watching Grass) or in English, a common variety of Four Wing Evening Primrose. I hadn't even heard of it. She said that it dyed a deep purple after having the initial yellow pigment removed in boiling water then in the second boiling being decocted in an alkaline dye bath and then reducing the pH with vinegar and finally mordanted with iron.

You can only get the dark color before the flower buds form in late spring. It sounded like a real pain in the ass to dye with. However, asking around the village it turns out it grows in the gravel on the stream bank just 50 meters from the front door.

The results were great on silk produced last spring. It dyed a pale yellow and instantly went dark purple in the iron mordant. Amazing reaction. On the right side of the picture you can see the pale yellow and on the left side the iron mordanted purple.

Indigo Days

It is stencil dying season again. The sun is warm enough to dry the glue paste. Here I have some lotus patterns I drew/carved last year and an old leaf stencil that Barbara cut out over ten years ago. The material is a hemp/ramie blend. Summer scarves for men and women are popular this year.

Eri spent ages individually trying these small square dots for her quilt project. I was worried it might turn out a little overdone..I was wrong. It tuned out perfect.


The vat was in great shape. All the light green is a sign that there is no oxygen in the vat and tha the pH is high. It is spinning after I stirred it.

New Shop and Workshop

On April 24th I opened a very small gallery and workshop in my town at the entrance to a large prefectural art recreation facility , Fujino Geijutsu no ie . There is a hotel and campground , theater for 300, a woodwork facility, glass work studio, pottery studio etc. I've held workshops here in the past. It was a center for many of the local artists for 15 years. Nine other creative types: potters, a landscape architect, several contemporary glass artists, a few painters, a leather worker making shoes and bags, a wood furniture maker, a Japanese antique dealer and myself. We each have a small separate wood cabin/container like gallery. There is a restaurant in the center with a huge balcony looking out on the mountains.

I set up two indigo vats on my balcony here. I'm taking it slow and letting it evolve without too much structure. I had figured I would have customers come and experiment with indigo dying. I prepared cloth ready to dye. They can bring their old clothes from home and refresh them with indigo. Sadly, it seems that people just come and shop. I pretty much sold out in the first two weeks. (Now I'm in frantic production mode!)

So my blog is suffering.