Cotton is a very interesting plant. Each boll I’ve picked has been a bit of a wonder, some more than others. The potential pigments are amazing. For example, check this out:

This unripe boll fell off the plant while I was looking for ripe bolls. According to my observations so far, bolls do not ripen off the plant. So I went ahead and cut this one open. The pigment looked like coagulated blood. (It’s definitely not; I didn’t cut myself. This time.) I think the pigment diffuses through the fiber as it ripens. More observations needed.

I’ve been able to distinguish 4 “types” of cotton based on appearance. (I am so looking forward to having properly labelled plants next year!) So I don’t know which varieties these are, but they’re shown below with the fiber, seeds, and empty boll-hull.

Another observation: Bolls are divided into sections, and the number of sections vary. Some have four, some have five. That might be a key to figuring out which variety they are. Hmm.

Meanwhile, the question of what I’m going to do with all of this cotton became complicated. My attempts to spin yarn from a clump of cotton with the tahkli failed. Mistress Argent pointed out that I need to card the cotton first. So I ordered some cotton carders, and they arrived today.

But … the yarn she spun from cotton on my tahkli looks more like thread. It is itty-bitty. Like sewing thread. One would have to twine several of those cotton threads together to make something that could be called “yarn.”

Confession Time: I’m a bit bummed about this because I assumed that I could just spin cotton into nice plump yarn and use it for my regular fiber crafts. Nope.

So I have begun to wonder what else people in the medieval era did with cotton. I found some references to making paper out of cotton in Italy, but scholars now think that was a translation error. I think I saw a mention of cotton candle wicks also. I haven’t really dived into figuring out what else I could make from cotton yet – these are just things that caught my eye while doing a preliminary search out of frustration. Maybe I’ll get the hang of spinning on the tahkli with carded cotton and making yarn won’t be such a big deal. I guess I’ll find out.