|
My quest started innocently enough last summer when we'd had a better week at market than usual, and I ordered some cotton off eBay to play with. The cotton I received was an upland variety, and because of the short fibers (@ 3/4"), I had to really loosen the tension on my wheel to the point that it was barely winding the yarn onto the bobbin. It wasn't a bad fiber to spin, very soft, but it was very frustrating because of the short fiber.
Because I do a good bit of my spinning at markets and gatherings, I like to be able to talk to folks and explain what I'm doing at the same time. If I tried to talk to anyone while spinning this, I couldn't pay as close of attention and, inevitably, the yarn would slip out of my fingers or just not wind on the bobbin. It was at that point that I started to look for longer-fibered cottons and stumbled across colored upland cottons. So after many months' contemplation, I happily sit here opening the small package that arrived from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. They've got one of the best assortments of colored cotton seeds I've found yet - Nankeen and Mississippi browns, and Earlene's and Arkansas greens. Though the Arkansas green would probably work a bit better with our climate here in the Missouri Ozarks, the artist and history geek in me won out, so I ordered the more blue-toned Earlene's green and the Mississippi brown that purports to come from pre-Civil War Natchez, Mississippi.
For this year, at least, they'll probably be planted in pots, mainly because that will let me move them back into the house on cold nights because of our shorter growing season and the fact that we don't have a greenhouse (yet). I'll probably start them in another few weeks, and hopefully will have some seedlings ready to move outdoors by the time the weather cooperates. Colored cottons are purported to do better in cooler climates, which is why Purdue University has been doing studies about growing them in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I'm going to start saving seed selectively for fiber length, shorter growing seasons, color depth, and cold hardiness. Since lowland cotton typically has the longer fiber length, I'll probably need to do a cross in a greenhouse next year with either that or if I can get a hold of some FoxFibre seeds. Sally Fox began selective breeding of colored cottons in the 1980's, and after several years has produced a colored cotton that is organic, pest resistant and has a long enough fiber to be commercially spun - a problem for most upland cottons which have a shorter fiber. I'd really like to get a hold of some other colors of cotton; I've read about reds, pinks and yellows in an article in Scientific American from 1999 mentioning the variety of colors in Peru. I've also heard rumors of blues, but only anecdotally. Finding seeds for any of these colors is another story, however.  A drop spindle and hand card used to process fiber into yarn.
Copyright © 2007 The Misty Manor, Mercers
Questions, comments, stupid chicken jokes? Send us
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
. |
