Trying Something New

You may remember me talking about how Alan's sister and brother in law bought Don's families farm in Louisiana a couple of years ago. Melinda absolutely loves to be outside digging in the dirt. This past summer she planted the most amazing gardens. She had all kinds of vegetables, flowers and cotton. That's right, COTTON. Did you know that it comes in a variety of colors? Who knew? Being the very kind and loving sister in law that she is, Melinda shared her cotton with Grace and me. She even pulled the seeds out of most of it. So nice. We have watched several videos and read numerous articles on exactly how to go about preparing this precious cotton for spinning. The pictures above show the process. The gist is that you put small amounts of cotton on a carder brush (dog brushes in our case) and then you "comb" the fiber with another brush several times to try and get the fibers all going in the same direction. Then you roll it up into what's call a rolag or puni and then you spin it from that. The cotton fibers are very short, so it's taking us a bit of practice to get the hang of it.  Hopefully when we are done we will have enough cotton yarn to make something special.
Sally