By Nadine Kam

Nadine Kam photos
Silkworms being raised at Honolulu Community College’s Fashion Technology Department.

It’s the season of fashion shows and with the end of the semester nearing, students at Honolulu Community College and the University of Hawaii at Manoa are busily working on their annual fashion showcases.

I sat in on a production class at HCC today and while a story on the students’ work will eventually appear in print, I also got a chance to see the silkworms being raised in the classroom. That was so cool! The worms were busily munching away on mulberry leaves grown on campus.

One cocoon was boiled with red dye, resulting in 300 to 500 yards of pink silk thread.

Sadly, the worms are boiled in their cocoon to keep their prized silk threads intact. While the moths in the empty cocoons were allowed to hatch, mate and lay eggs, one cocoon was sacrificed so the students could unravel the thread in one 300- to 500-yard filament. It took about 4 hours to unspool.

I was so interested in the worms, instructor Joy Nagaue offered to give me some, but they’re voracious so I’m pretty sure I don’t have time to keep gathering the leaves they require to make their silk, though I would like to see them spin their cocoons.

Hatched cocoons, about the size of peanuts, with the remains of white moths that live only a few days, plus eggs that look like sesame seeds dotting the egg carton to the right of the photo.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 11:32 pm and is filed under Fiber. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.