Today started with a tour at the nearby Silk Village – it used to be an active silk producing village, but is now a resort and restaurant with displays about the production of silk. I was shown how the whole production process works, and then provided with a “light” lunch in the restaurant. All this in a private tour, including transport to and from my hotel, for about $23. I did buy a few metres of fabric as well, of course.
Young silk wormsPreparing the leaves for feeding – very young silk worms require finely chopped leaves, fed every three hours. Older worms have larger leaves, but require feeding every hourThe worms are transferred to frames where they spin their cocoons. The best 10% are kept to supply a new generation, the rest have just lost a very tough game of Survivor.To remove the silk, the cocoons are put into hot water.The strands of silk are spun together to create the silk strands – different qualities of silk have different numbers of cocoons spun together. The silk strands are then boiled again to make them soft.Demonstration of traditional Champa style weaving. Those hanging rocks are raised or lowered to move the threads to create different patterns.I got to have a go – but I was not allowed to operate the rocks. Probably best as coordinating my hands and the foot pedals was quite challenging enough.My weaving – I did the last motif.More modern loom, operated by just pressing a foot pedal. Allowed production from one loom to go from four to twenty metres a day. Later electricity was introduced to move the pedal, leading to todays mechanised versions.The restaurant area where I had lunch.“Light lunch” course one.“Light lunch” course two.“Light lunch” courses three and four.
After lunch I went back into town and found the cloth market where I bought a couple more lengths of fabric. I then had a wander around the Ancient Town area, which was pretty enough but mostly just filled with tourist shops.
