Cotton Harvest 2020

Well. from that one boll I showed you 2 months ago, the plants did pretty well.  I still have a small number of bolls that haven't yet opened, but I brought them into the warmth of the house so I'm sure they'll open up soon.

In the meantime, I've been busy finishing last year's cotton.  I had a bit of a lapse whilst spinning this bobbin because of a problem with my neck (which turned out to date back to a car accident we had 27-28 years ago - the osteopath said my neck was out of position and probably had been for all that time!) but it finally got finished.  I'm not sure how much there is here but these bobbins normally hold about 135g of spun wool.  This cotton is wrapped pretty tightly on there and I suspect there may be more than that.

I'll be using this as one ply and this year's cotton will be the 2nd ply, so far from finished yet.

I don't have a photo of all this year's bolls but they must have made quite a pile.  From 10 plants I have 135 bolls already open, with between 12 and 15 still to go.  That makes about 14 bolls per plant, not bad really!

This is the fluff that I've picked out so far :-

It doesn't look much here, but actually weighs 440g.  OK, that still contains the seeds so I expect the weight will go down considerably.

I find this photo so cute.  In each boll there are between 3 and 5 segments normally (I've never seen a 6 segment, but maybe it's possible) all full of fluff and seeds.  In each segment there are usually about 5 or 6 seeds, each seed surrounded by its own fluff.  The little cutie above is one seed with its respective fluff fanned out around it.

The next step is to gin the cotton (i.e. remove the seeds), then card the cotton ready for spinning.

The final problem is - what do I do with all the "skeletons"?  I normally keep them for months and months wondering what I could use them for, then throw them away eventually!  This year I bought some silver spray paint and some glitter and have started to make Christmas decorations.  Actually, I think they'd make pretty little angels because they do look a bit like ballerinas, but I haven't finished playing yet.  This is as far as I've got:-

Waste not, want not!!