Thursday, January 29, 2009

Cocoons: First Harvest.

Today I 'harvested' my cocoons. It was a little like collecting eggs from hens allowed to roam in a barn, although mine were in a shoe box...


and a little like plucking fruit from a tree, since each cocoon is suspended in place by a web, a 'floss' of silk, which has a slightly different structure from the silk in the cocoon.


I have let them nestle awhile in a silk scarf (which seemed appropriate), and it is interesting to see how different they are: one is significantly smaller than the rest, and one is irregularly-shaped, with a waist, and yet another is not quite opaque. Inside I can see the grub. It rattles around, still white, but clearly dead. I am thinking this one might be a good one to try to unravel, or 'reel'.

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5 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Can't wait to see how it goes and how much silk you're going to 'reel' out of it. An interesting experiment, Clare!

Thu Jan 29, 12:57:00 pm  
Blogger Clare Dudman said...

Sadly it was a complete failure, Barbara! I shall provide details later!

Thu Jan 29, 01:30:00 pm  
Blogger Jud said...

It has been interesting to watch the little critters.

Thu Jan 29, 02:41:00 pm  
Blogger Clare Dudman said...

Thanks, Jud!

Thu Jan 29, 07:41:00 pm  
Blogger jem said...

Wow. I can't believe how quickly they did that. Amazing. Thanks for sharing such descriptive details. I only had a basic understanding of what happened before. This feels like the science class we never got at school, but which a much nicer teacher :)

Sun Feb 01, 12:56:00 pm  

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