In the continued journey of never really growing up, I got myself some silkworms.
It started with driving past the many mulberry trees on São Miguel island, Açores, and remembering childhood hobbies.
Then one day when I was feeling in need of retail therapy and some procrastination, I went on a mission to see if I could buy some. Well, I’ve done this several times but this time I think the season was right or the stars aligned or something. I bought them from a Spanish company – Lombrices de California who have a wide assortment of different species (who even knew there was more than one!) and all sorts of other critter related stuff.
I first bought the 10 different species option – poke-bicho gotta collect them all! But when they were ready to ship, we realised that getting them to the island within two days before their food runs out was going to be too expensive. So we uhmed and ahhed for a bit, I learnt about all sorts of different options in case I ever need other stuff shipped, but we ended up giving up on the live worms. So they sent me a bunch of eggs from 3 different species, and I’m currently hoping they hatch.
Of course, I can’t remember what is needed for them to hatch, I just remember leaving them in our garage. But, turns out, according to ideal temperatures are around 23 – 28 degrees Celsius, and a humidity of 75 – 85%. Today’s temperature here, for example is 25 degrees and humidity is between 75 and 80%.
On my search, I stumbled across a three page article “A Amoreira e a Sericultura“, apparently by a Carreiro da Costa, from 1945? I think this article is the answer to why there’s so many mulberry trees on the island, along the roads. Mulberry trees as a roadside plant seems a bit weird, as they get so messy during their fruiting phase. Not that I’m complaining, of course, but it made me think there must be more to it, and this article seems to imply there was, at some point in the past, at least. The article also seem to imply that the trees are the Morus alba variety which has white fruits, so, less obviously messy, and is better preferred by the worms. I asked the Serviço de Desenvolvimento Agrário de S. Miguel if there’s still anything going on, so far they’ve acknowledged the email but are still trying to find out. (Point aside, the people at this office are probably either intrigued or annoyed by me and my bizarre questions by now.)
Why do I want silkworms? To make silkworm art. There’s this method of making a silk shape made by confining the worms to a circular flat plane. This is what I did as a child. Pointy shapes don’t work so well because the worms take shortcuts. I seem to remember the pupae could still hatch after this, even without their cocoon, if you protected them well. I’ll have to test this again now, but if so, this could be a friendlier way of obtaining the silk that doesn’t boil the pupae alive.
It blew my mind that all three people I asked when I shared my excitement, did not do this as a kid. Lost generation. But I slowly started to realise the climate favoured me here. Johannesburg, South Africa, in summer and Azores in summer are pretty good for silkworms. The three people I spoke to were all from different, colder places. My best friend from childhood remembers, and shared the odd practise of then keeping these in her bible, which I did too! Weird.
One question that always comes up, how many silkworms to make a blouse? According to Cassie Dickson : 1000 silk worms + 50 pounds (23 kg) of fresh, scrubbed Mulberry Tree leaves = silk fiber to make 1 blouse.
Also, I bought a lot of silk from deadstock fabric company Belgarian, to make my own clothes, my own style of business formal dress.
But maybe I should weave something from scratch. A silk wool blend. And the wool made from Pygora goats. But that is a project for another time.
Sharing my excitement in a casual chat with my metaverse friends, we started joking about making an NFT for each silkworm (but I’ll replace the ones that died in secret). We started coming up with ideas like having their equivalent presence in a virtual world with little silkworm things to do. When they are ready to spin silk, the NFT holders could send me a pattern for the silkworms to spin on that we send to them, a physical artefact, along with a certificate of authenticity. But then, we said, the silkworms are tiny, their certificates should be tiny, the size of a stamp. So we will send this tiny, official certificate of authenticity, and maybe send a tiny magnifying glass for the viewer to inspect it.
This was all tongue in cheek on a Wednesday evening, but as a school literacy project, it could work! It could have lessons not just on life, and silkworms, but on digital literacy, technology, virtual worlds, and connecting across the globe. A silken postcard project. Maybe we’ll even do it.