Throughout Asia, farmers march to markets with baskets and bags full of 'green' cocoons atop their heads. Here buyers fiercely bid on the crops. The cocoon is in the 'green' state until the transforming pupa inside is stifled to prevent the maturing of the pupa into a moth. Cocoon gathering, transporting, selling, and stifling must be done within the two week metamorphosis period. If the pupa is allowed to mature, the emerging moth emits a brown juice which disintegrates the silk and forms a hole for the moth to escape, breaking the fibre into short pieces that cannot be reeled.

FURTHER INFORMATION ABOUT SILK YARNS

Factories, cottage industries, and individuals all unravel cocoons using the same basic principles. Sorting through the cocoons and unleashing the silk produces three grades of yarn: reeled, spun, and noil. In Consinee , Silk can be blended with cashmere, wool or other fiber to make into yarns for Fall/Winter clothes or with other fiber for Spring/Summer clothes. It is a natural high quality fiber.

REELED YARN

Reeled, or filament silk is the highest quality yarn and is very white and shiny. First the cocoons are inspected and sorted, as only those with a perfect shape can be used for the reeling procedure. Cocoons are soaked in warm water to soften the gummy sericin. The silken strand from a single cocoon is too fine to use alone, so individual filaments of 6-20 cocoons are unravelled at the same time, travelling through a very small eye. The softened sericin dries, hardens and binds the strands together to become one thread the size of a human hair. The majority of reeled silks supply large industrial looms.