Growing bush cotton

Here's my latest project - this will go on behind the scenes for the duration of the summer. I hope it is a long, hot and dry one. No, I don't. That's too selfish. But that is what cotton plants need in order to grow and produce a flower, and thus the cotton boll.

I'm inspired to try this out as the flax growing and processing over that last two summers was so satisfying. And I much prefer to spin cotton than flax, so this is worth the try.

There were six pots of Heirloom Bush Cotton planted on May 20th. On June 4th, I had 50% germination. And four days later, two more came up.  It has held at 5 out of 6 pots. That's pretty good - 83% germination. Now I just wait for the heat to build and the lovelies to grow. I will transplant them into increasing larger pots as they grow. Don't think I'll actually put them into the ground in case I need to move them to a hot spot at the end of the summer.

The original photos for this blog post were somehow lost. But here is photo of the plants a couple of months later, when I put them into the ground.

Cutest plants. Hope they grow!

Winter Thaw - Sweet Georgia Yarn fibre club March 2014

The March 2014 Sweet Georgia Yarn fibre club is a delicious 4 oz/100 g braid of Superwash BFL in greens, blues and browns. I spun it up on my Houndesign spindle, and plied on the spindle as well.

I divided the colour way into lengths that went from blue to brown to green. The plan was to further split them into pencil rovings and spin one spindle starting with the blue, and then fill a second spindle starting with the green. My thought was that when it was plied I would get a two-ply yarn that would have blue/green sections and full brown sections. 

Didn't quite work out as my pencil rovings were of dramatically varying thicknesses. But the finished yarn is lovely and I can't wait to find a project for it.

Here's what it looked like in progress. 

Taking a well deserved break. . . . .

 Two spindles full of just plied yarn waiting to be wound off on the niddy-noddy into skeins.

And here's the freshly plied yarn - total of 310 metres, or 286 yards of fingering/sport weight. Can't wait to see what's in store for this lovely yarn.

Eye candy #1

These nests are pulled from a drum carded batt that combined various colours in the purple/blue range with angelina sparkle.  Wool base is Corriedale.