Home Spun Gold
Jul 17th, 2008 by Jinja
If you can’t bring people to the silk farm, you bring the farm to town.
And give them cocktails.
An evening out at the ‘Silkworm Social‘ highlighted Cambodia’s specialized variety of naturally colored gold threads. About 5 tons are produced each year, and it could be much more.
Above, we have some silkworms eating their favored mulberry leaves.
The worms then spin a cocoon and emerge as moths.
At silk-producing facilities the cocoons are preferred undamaged. So a few are saved for breeding. The rest are boiled and somehow the cocoon naturally unravels its tiny threads, which merge into a thicker thread which is then spooled up. Don’t ask me how it works, it just does.
‘Cocoon soup’ ! Dang, all I had was my camera-phone to snap pictures.
Princess Bopha Devi attended and lent her support to awareness raising efforts about the local silk industry. Very little is produced in Cambodia, especially the yellow variety. News article:
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2008072520988/National-news/
Silkmakers-to-spin-industry-revival.html
