Paris Hilton has started doing her 200 hours of community service. She was pleaded guilty to drug possession and obstructing a police officer in August, and she got 1 year probation that includes community service and enrollment in a substance abuse treatment program. She has also to pay a fine of $2000. You can view the pictures from Paris Hilton's first day of community service. She looks funny doing all the work on high heels!
Sericulture
The silkworm attaches itself to a compartmented frame, twig, tree or shrub in a rearing house to spin a silk cocoon over a 3 to 8 day period. This period is termed pupating.
Here are the steps of making Silk
Cultivation of the silkworm is known as sericulture.
Hatching the Eggs
The first stage of silk production is the laying of silkworm eggs, in a controlled environment such as an aluminum box, which are then examined to ensure they are free from disease. The female deposits 300 to 400 eggs at a time.
The Feeding Period
Once hatched, the larvae are placed under a fine layer of gauze and fed huge amounts of chopped mulberry leaves during which time they shed their skin four times. The larvae may also feed on Osage orange or lettuce. Larvae fed on mulberry leaves produce the very finest silk. The larva will eat 50,000 times its initial weight in plant material.
Spinning the Cocoon
Reeling the Filament
At this stage, the cocoon is treated with hot air, steam, or boiling water. The silk is then unbound from the cocoon by softening the sericin and then delicately and carefully unwinding, or ‘reeling’ the filaments from 4 – 8 cocoons at once, sometimes with a slight twist, to create a single strand.
Types of Silk
Raw silk is twisted into a strand sufficiently strong for weaving or knitting. This process of creating the silk yarn is called “throwing,” and prevents the thread from splitting into its constituent fibers.Four different types of silk thread may be produced from this procedure: crepe, tram, thrown singles, and organzine.
