I grew up in West Texas, heard of the movie "Friday Night Lights"? I lived about 40 minutes from there in crappy Big Spring, Texas. In that area of Texas you are surrounded by cotton fields, no matter what direction you head in away from the town you will pass at least one cotton field. Now that I am into spinning I want to go walk through the fields and pick some this fall when it's ready. (I actually know someone who owns a field so this most likely will happen!) But, until then I was lucky enough that a wonderful lady on Ravelry still had some cotton straight out of the boll from her pickings last year. She was kind enough to send me some to play with and even to try planting the seeds!
Never seen cotton from a boll, or the seeds? Well you are in luck because this nerd documented the picking and pulling.
When you pick the cotton out of the boll it appear like this:
The seeds are hidden inside and you have to pick them out by pulling the fiber:
You then have some lovely cotton to card into spin-able fiber!:
Start to finish (top left, middle, top right):
I also finished some yarn! The blue and most of the green was dyed with neon Easter egg dye, but some of the green is actually Cotswold curls that were already that color (you can tell where it is because the yarn fluffs out because it is a different type of wool). I ended up with a Sport weight and 274 yards
No comments:
Post a Comment