magic seeds

At the beginning of this year I was gifted a few rare seeds.

They were planted and watered and fussed over.
They grew
and bloomed
and fruited.
I've waited
and waited
and waited.

cotton thread collection method

Once wound on to paper spools (or quills), the threads live in a jar. There are five occupants currently. How far they might reach if unrolled is unknown.

cotton spinning spider

My father recently noted I've become a spider, he might be right. Across the table from him, I am spinning a fine white line from cotton fluff.

Since spring, cotton has become one of my favorite fibers to spin. While at a handweaver's conference last March, I had the good fortune to meet an incredible spinner who specializes in spinning cotton. At every opportunity I sat at her booth, surrounded by mounds of the softest cotton roving, and watched mesmerized as she spun by turns on her spinning wheel and takli. Fluff turned to thread in long stretches, little slubs deftly smoothed out into fine lines as if by magic. The process from the outside is mysterious and the effect hypnotic. Joan, the spinner, wore an exquisite blouse made from cotton grown in her garden, hand spun and handwoven. She explained that while the spinning wheel was essential for speed, the takli was her preferred tool for spinning warp threads because they could be spun more finely and then plied for strength at the same thickness as a weft thread spun (and used as a single) on a wheel. In just the span of a couple short days, I had become the student of a Spider.
For months since, I've carried this little spindle, a lap bowl, and cotton fluff everywhere. When the opportunity arises, I sit and draw a fine fine thread from the tips of my fingers on one hand as the other flicks the spindle to spin. It stretches up and out as far as I can reach before I twist it onto the shaft of the spindle. Whenever visiting friends, watching movies, waiting for a table at dinner, or riding in the car it comes out and spins. My teacher, Joan, warned me simply to not to use it at auctions, as she inadvertently agreed to purchase a cow once. The takli sat in silence for a time after I managed to break it, but I've since replaced it and have been spinning again.

Months after that first little flick of the spindle, I've spun just a couple of ounces of tiny thread which I'll ply together for warping my own loom someday.

thread harvest

April planting of five Upland Cotton seeds.
September harvest of fourty-five bolls.
A boll is made up of four to five sections holding four to eight seeds.
Attached to each seed surface are many many fibers each of which is an outgrowth of a single cell that develops in the surface layer of the seed.
In the beginning the fiber cell elongates to its full length as a thin–walled tube. As it matures, the fiber wall is thickened by deposits of cellulose inside the tube, leaving a hollow area in the center. When the growth period ends the living material dies, and the fiber collapses and twists about its own axis.
Each boll may hold up to 500,000 fibers.

Some prepare all those fibers before spinning by removing the seeds one by one and combing the fibers to roll them into little pencil sized punnis.
With my handspindle I spun directly from the soft seeded mass. The fibers tearing from the seed bit by bit.
What will one boll make?

One spool of course.
The cotton still blooms and a second harvest has nearly arrived.

Cotton

Driving up through the state of Georgia last November was to experience a different kind of economy. In western Georgia industrial agriculture holds royal court and Cotton is king. November is the end of cotton season, and between towns and patches of forest the fields are white. Tractors tear through them at high speed, leaving a wake of naked stalks. Mysteriously this process ends with cotton bales the size of freight cars patiently awaiting pick up. They prissily wear plastic cover proclaiming farmers names, while leaking their essence at the corners. White fluff litters both sides the highway all through the state. A small sliver of unharvested stalks beckon at the edge of the road, and I jump out to pluck bolls from them and fill my shirt. They have the smell of green pecan hulls, acrid and slightly sweet.

My dad used to pronouce "Oh lordy pick a bale of cotton" after a hard day landscaping another client's yard, and it's not till I get home with my meager cotton pickings that I look up the song sung by slaves and then by Leadbelly in 1945. ( I watched that video at least four times, with my mouth hanging open, it's beautiful: the video's color, his singing, playing a twelve string guitar, his educational spoken bit right at the beginning, there's joy and desperation and sadness and family running all through it.)The bolls sat for weeks in a corner of my studio, the husks turning brown and exploding in white puffs on the floor. Pick them up and mining for seeds is the game. Each boll has three or four sections similar to an orange made up of tightly packed fibers huddled around as many as eight or more seeds. There are three parts used from the cotton plant: the inch long fibers that pull away from the seed fairly easily are used for spinning into cloth, the short fibers still attached to the seed are called linters, which are used for making paper and the seed itself is pressed for oil. Many cotton handspinners insist you must pick out the seeds and vegetable matter and card them on very fine carders (cat combs work well) lay little sections side by side and roll them around a pencil to make cotton punis. A few drop spindle users spin off the seed itself. The former method seems a little tedious and so I have been following the latter using a supported spindle I made from a wooden toy wheel and a dowel. Though this method is hard to get a perfectly even or thicker thread, the feel of the cotton pulling in tiny pop pop from the seed under my fingers is satisfying. Five of the seeds I have spun in this way are the ones growing in my garden now, the first bloomed yesterday a small cream hibiscus flower that today closed and blushed a shade of purple while tiny skeins of cotton thread await the next transformation.

Growing Fiber Update

cotton

flax

Transplanted these recently to better soil and they seem to be happier.

sown April 7th