Have you tried EZ-Spin cotton? – Blog Post
Ready to Spin?
We are thrilled to announce that we are now the exclusive suppliers of EZ-spin cotton! Lura Moore and Jill Holbrook, the owners of Brookmoore Creations have passed the cotton spinning torch to us at Lunatic Fringe Yarns. The EZ-Spin cotton sliver is a wonderful complement to our own American Maid™ Cotton yarns. Grown and processed in the US and ready to spin into your own cotton creations.We are in awe of the wealth of knowledge that Jill and Lura have about cotton and hand spinning and are thrilled to take up that torch and run with it.
Cotton is a soothing fiber to spin. Mahatma Gandhi spun cotton - a plant indigenous to his country, India. Gandhi said if everyone in the world spun for an hour a day there would be no more wars. What a lovely thought!
Here we’ve paraphrased a bit of what Jill passed along to us about cotton spinning:
There is a modern myth that cotton is a hard fiber for hand spinners to spin. It is, in fact, easy to spin, especially when you start with EZ-Spin cotton sliver. Unlike wool where the fibers have scales, cotton fibers start as a tube that becomes hollow and collapses as it matures. Under a microscope a cross section of the tube looks like a kidney bean! This creates convolutions in the cotton fibers that assist the spinner in the same way that the scales in wool fiber does. The cotton fiber convolutions hang onto each other. They pull their neighbors along into the drafting zone.
However, when cotton is prepared for commercial spinning at a mill, the cotton fibers are straightened to make them slippery. This is what is needed for the manufacturing process, but it is not ideal for hand spinners. The cotton sliver available to hand spinners in the past was this type of cotton.
In the process of making the EZ-Spin cotton sliver, the wonderful cotton fiber convolutions have been left in the sliver. It is ideal for hand spinning.
For spinners new to cotton or those who tried the slippery versions in the past you must try the EZ-Spin cotton sliver. This sliver makes spinning cotton a joy. Give it a try!