Who knows! As soon as I returned to the mountains to farm, I encountered a natural disaster.

The weather is not quite cool yet, and the lowest temperature in the morning and evening is still 18 degrees.

She felt warm when she hugged Mu Xi at night, but Zhao Yeqing still felt that it was very novel. This was a quilt made by the two of them. It was her first time making a quilt, and she would definitely have to try it before making it.

Silk quilts are soft, skin-friendly and weightless.

Zhao Yeqing originally liked the weight of thick quilts, but now that the weather is not cold yet, quilts of this weight are not out of the question.

But in the middle of the night, Zhao Yeqing felt the difference between five pounds of cotton and five pounds of silk.

It was too hot. She felt that even in winter, this quilt was completely enough to survive the winter.

The current temperature is hot when covered, but cold when not covered. I have to get up in the middle of the night and change the original quilt back.

As soon as Zhao Yeqing woke up in the morning, he took out some old cotton-padded jackets he had collected from the woven bag, carefully opened the stitches, took out the old cotton inside, and planned to fill it with silk. It would definitely be very warm.

There was still a part of the silkworm cocoons that had not been boiled. This was left by Zhao Yeqing to extract silk and peel off the cocoons. She planned to study this first before the cotton was planted.

The needle and thread were put into Mu Xi's hand. He was better at this than Zhao Yeqing. She only told her some changes she wanted to make on the original basis, then let Mu Xi sew and went downstairs to cook. cocoon.

The cocoons used to make silk quilts were boiled by Mu Xi. When Zhao Yeqing got started, he discovered that it was not that simple. According to the incomplete text description on the yellowed book page, after slow-cooking at low temperature, cold water must be added to soak it, and then boiled over high heat. , repeat several times.

The temperature should also be controlled well. The water temperature should be kept at about 80 degrees and should not be boiled too much.

She wasn't sure this time and didn't know if she could succeed today, so she just cooked a few in a small pot to practice.

Zhao Yeqing originally thought that the silkworm cocoons would smell like insects after being cooked, but he thought that the white silkworm cocoons exuded the fragrance of mulberry leaves and had no strange smell at all.

Put the cleaned silkworm cocoon in the water basin and shake it gently. The colloid-free silk slowly spread out in the water. Zhao Yeqing took a chopstick and began to carefully try to break up a silkworm cocoon.

I couldn't find it even after digging carefully with the chopstick head. Could it be the problem with the cocoon?

Rejecting internal friction, Zhao Yeqing usually looks for the reason from other things first, and it is definitely not his own technical problem.

However, there was no success after several times. There were already seven or eight cocoons floating in the basin that had been poked by Zhao Yeqing. Her patience ran out and she used her chopsticks to stir the cocoons quickly and hard several times in the basin as if to vent her anger.

Destroy it, why is it so difficult?

She was just about to throw down the chopsticks in her hand, but when she picked them up, she found that the chopsticks were covered with stirred up silk.

Ok?

Zhao Yeqing held the chopsticks and lifted them up. The cocoons in the basin began to roll one by one, and the white and crystal clear silk was pulled out, glowing in the sun.

She paused on the spot, feeling angry and funny. What on earth was she doing for more than an hour just now?

But it was a success at least. She put the chopsticks back into the basin, picked up the entire basin and carried it to the brick house. She passed the extracted silk ends through the wooden sticks with small holes drilled and stuck them on the spinning wheel.

The small hole gradually gathered and twisted the originally scattered tiny silk threads into a slightly thicker white silk thread. This was because there was still a little sericin left on it, which condensed the threads together when they passed through the hole.

The wheels of this spinning wheel were a bit big. She remembered that the wheels of the reeling machines she had seen in the video were relatively small, but the wheels of the spinning wheel were relatively small. One turn was worth three or four turns of that kind of wheel, and the speed of reeling could not be accelerated. few.

However, the silk threads made from these cocoons were still a little thin. Zhao Yeqing did not stop until all the silk threads were drawn out. These cocoons were used for experiments. After making the silk threads, she wanted to try it. dyeing.

Almost all of this batch of cocoons are used to make quilts, and there are not many left. Even if we figure out how to make silk, we have to wait until the next batch of cocoons is formed.

The silk thread of a silkworm cocoon can be about hundreds to more than a thousand meters long. Although there are only a dozen cocoons, the final silk thread is still a bit of a harvest.

The glue must be washed again and dried before dyeing.

The last cleaning was done with starching. Zhao Yeqing had read a lot of books and novels with ancient backgrounds. The word starching was used from time to time in the books, but in the description, soap locust was used for cleaning. It couldn't even be done according to the script. There was no such thing. I have learned what starching is.

To remove oil stains and gum on silk fabrics, the original method requires the use of natural lotions such as saponin and soapberry, as well as rice soup water or rice washing water, which contains starch. Only when it is washed with water can it be called 'slurry'.

Zhao Yeqing originally wanted to wash it directly with starch mixed with water, but he felt it was a bit extravagant, so he washed the rice he was going to eat tonight in advance, and then used white rice washing water to clean the silk threads.

Starch is not used much at home. In fact, most of the time it is used for cleaning. I use some when cooking, that is, thickening and frying. If there are too many sweet potatoes and potatoes left every year, some of them will be used to make it. starch.

It can be used when slaughtering pigs and cattle and sheep. It is very effective in cleaning the internal organs of livestock and is very effective in removing oil stains and odors.

You can’t buy bleach now, and sometimes some white clothes turn yellow. Soaking them with starch and then washing them will make them whiter than washing them directly.

There wasn't much silk thread and it was hung on a rope in the yard. It would probably be dry by the evening.

There are many plants that can be used to make dyes in the mountains. Compared with the previous weather, more plants with bright colors can be collected now. Zhao Yeqing first found the easiest green dye from the warehouse to dye the silk threads.

They are all pure plants and have been dried in the sun. If you want to get green dye, you have to soak it in water first and dilute the color before dyeing.

Mu Xi sewed a cotton-padded jacket in one afternoon. Zhao Yeqing couldn't wait to try it on. In less than a minute, his body became hot and he hurriedly took it off.

"This is much better than cotton!"

Mu Xi rubbed the silk inside. He nailed a few more stitches to strengthen it. After rubbing, he found no loose cotton. He nodded with satisfaction.

"That's right. After the cotton is planted next year, we can just use it to spin thread."

If you want to make clothes, you can only use cotton. Relying on the mulberry leaves at home to raise silkworms is not enough to achieve the freedom of new clothes.

Mu Xi saw that the sun had turned to the west, so he walked outside the yard and took down the branches that could be cut from the mulberry tree. Winter was coming this year and it was no longer suitable for raising silkworms. Taking advantage of the fact that mulberry leaves were not needed during this period, he hurriedly Expand the planting area of ​​mulberry trees.