Long time no speak

So, what have I been doing all this time?  Well, we were given some cherries (black and red ones), so last Monday I bottled them in a sugar syrup :-

I finished spinning some Ouessant sheep's wool and silk (a strand of each)

Then on Wednesday, we had a trip out to Ikea in Toulouse, and I found these cotton bolls and just had to buy some.

I couldn't resist taking one of them apart and was amazed at the number of seeds there were.  I grew some cotton a few years ago, but when the weather started to get a bit colder, they all died.  My greenhouse had just blown away in a storm so I really didn't have anywhere warm enough for them.  Maybe I'll have another go with these seeds.

I may just take them all to bits and use the cotton in some yarn - it's lovely and white.  But first, I'm spinning some more camel :-

and my cat :-

This is a ball of recycled silk yarn that I was given a few days ago by a friend (thanks Sue!).  I'm planning to use it as a detail in something, but I'm not sure yet quite what.

And, last but definitely not least - my silkworm eggs finally arrived today.  They were only posted in the Tarn and Garonne, which is the next department to where we live, but they've taken 11 days to get here.  They could have walked quicker.  Anyway, it was quite a hot day today (32 deg C in the shade) and by the time I got them, most of them had already hatched.  Luckily they were still alive, so I put them in a box and fed them.  Within seconds they had climbed onto the mulberry leaves and were chomping away happily.  I'll post some photos when they're a bit bigger - there's no point at the moment because they're extremely small and I don't think they'd show up on a photograph.  They're also black and don't stand out very well against the leaves.  So keep your fingers crossed that I don't manage to kill them off!