Koinobori

Yesterday Tetsu Choco and I went out on a drive and we ended up at a fish museum which was interesting but I couldn't get too many pictures. It was a warm day and of course Choco wasn't allowed in the museum so we left her in the car with the windows part way down, and some of my picnic quilts thrown over the windshield and back window. Even so, I worried about her so we made a quick jaunt through the museum and I was ready to continue our drive when... we came across an arts and crafts room. I am a sucker for arts and crafts rooms and Tetsu knows it so he encouraged me to join the craft class and he'd take Choco for a walk, take a nap with her out on the grass, generally keep Choco company while I crafted something.

I had a great time. The class was targeted at elementary school age kids and every couple of hours a teacher was teaching a craft to anyone who might sign up. There were 10 of us and though some mothers worked alongside their kids I was the only childless adult in the room.

And what did we make? Koinobori! A flying carp decoration that honors Boy's Day which is on May 5th. And what are the little flying carp made of do you think? ...Silk worm cocoons! How cool is that! We were each given a packet with pre-dyed cocoons and bits of string, bamboo and beads and then we cut, glued, painted and tied until at the end of an hour we each had our own little Koinobori.

And, can I tell you a story about silk worms and their cocoons?

My mother was an elementary school teacher and she always taught a unit on Japan. Somewhere along the line she started a science project of raising silk worms so that the children could see the process of how the worms eat mulberry leaves, spin a cocoon, push out of the cocoon as moths and then lay eggs again for another generations of worms. This is amazing because my mother has always had a phobia about worms (the long earthworm variety) but she persevered and for many, many years she taught her school kids about the process of getting silk after boiling the cocoons and unraveling a thread. I'm sure it was very interesting for the kids, but at home the thing I remember most is going into the refrigerator looking for something to eat and quite often there would be a Tupperware container marked "DO NOT EAT. SILK WORM EGGS INSIDE!" Sort of kills one's appetite.

Of course, the unraveling thread process was only shown on one or two cocoons so every year my mother would have a nice box of cocoons left over and we never could figure out what to do with them so they'd eventually get tossed. How she would have loved to do this craft project yesterday!

I'm a little early in wishing everyone a happy Boy's Day, but I wanted to show a picture of my koinobori before the cats start playing with it and it falls apart! Anyway, the farmers are beginning to fly their koinobori in the fields so I guess I'm not rushing the season!