Silk farm (photo & text)

There isn't a lot of tourists at the silk factory near the town of Dalat in Vietnam's mountains. It is a problem to get there, but we did it and we didn't regret the result of nerves and wasted money.

There are three kinds of silk farm / factory:

1.  Which the larvae grows (we haven't reached them).

2. Where to draw the threads. Here is a little woven fabric.

3. Which creates unrealistic embroidery on silk.

 The last one -  the company XQ, which pays guides, and they carry packs of tourists go there. We also wanted to get there, but doesn't get in time.

 

Pupated larvae stored this way.

 Chicken steals, but the foreman chasing her.

So, girl takes the bundles of sticks cocoons and put them in a saucepan of boiling water at first.

Larvae cooked and died. The smell there is a bit nauseating, like the smell ofcooked meat, but specific. Later, when we bought the scarves, they wereimpregnated with this odor, and even after I washed it, it is still a little left. Here are the boiled cocoons.

Then they put them in a long trough of water to pull the thread of each.

I used to think that necessarily looking for the very tip of a thread in a cocoon, to beunwound. In fact, I realized that this is nonsense of course, simply tighten the surface of cobweb. Here is seen as a thread from each cocoon.

Then she picks up the threads from several cocoons.

   

And here is my second myth. I thought the thread from the cocoon - this is the finalthread. This is not the case. Silk yarn spun from several micro-filaments. The numberof threads determines the thickness of the finished yarn and cloth, respectively, the thickness of the future. You see a number of "showers"? So, this is not the shower, this is yarns from cocoons. Girl finger leads to a bunch of threads that rapidly rotating little things and thread as it sucked in there and twist.

And then two threads are merged into one and  almost finished yarn is wound onto a spool.

Coils with ready-made filaments.

Here what reeled off cocoons looks like . There's  larvae translucenting.

This is a photo I took last year in the market in the meat department. Then Ihad no idea that this "silk" larvae. I'm not 100% sure, but they are very similar, and the logic fits. Otherwise they have to do with the larvae spent?

There are several looms yet, where a simple weave fabric. At the top, left of the machine can be seen hanging from a stack of punched cards, or as it's called.

This card, which is encoded in the pattern of the fabric. Through each hole, and thenskipped the thread on the machine they are clever move and magically get a pattern.

 

And on this machine they produce a rough silk burlap. We do not understand for what, maybe for decorative purposes.

And on this one machine they produce the threads by the same principle as the others, but thicker and with nodes.

Scarves are made from them. They stanks like boiled meat.