Cotton Fiber News

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Wishing you happy holidays, whichever ones you celebrate.
Use the coupon code
HOLIDAY18
for a $10 discount on any one digital download until Dec 31, 2018.
One coupon per customer

Help bring peace to the world by wearing your best smile when you are out in the world; not the forced one you put on when someone is taking your picture, but the one that comes naturally when you think of something joyful or humorous.
Smiles are contagious.

Finally! After 4 updates by UPS, first that my package would arrive Friday, then unknown delivery date, then Monday, then Saturday, the shuttles are here!
This is a glimpse of what is to come--increasing severity of storms, hurricanes, and all of the woes that attend them. We can push our representatives to pass legislation, but what responsibilities do we take on ourselves? The large corporations could not exist without the consumers who buy their products.
Just a hint for your new year's resolutions...

NEW PRODUCTS:

Just in, a new batch of Khadi Khanoo shuttles from Bluster Bay Woodworks, made especially for charkha spinners who weave with their singles. Top to bottom: 3 each Pacific madrone, black cherry, white ash, 2 purpleheart, 3 each African bubinga, red gum, black walnut.
One should work with beautiful tools.

If you post any of your work with Dye-Lishus® cotton to Instagram, please use the hashtag

#dyelishuscotton

NEW TECHNIQUES:

I have been asked on more than one occasion:

"Why are my handspun, handwoven cotton towels not absorbent? I thought cotton was supposed to be absorbent."

In a word, the answer is "twist".
In a few more words, "too much twist".
The less twist, the more absorbent, because you have not compressed all of the airspace out of the yarn. It's that airspace that lets the water rush in.
A few years ago, a towel company was marketing "unspun cotton towels" I can't find them on the internet now, but to make your own super absorbent towels with your "unspun" handspun weft, spin your yarn to knitting twist, then ply with a soluble basting thread called Vanish. You can purchase this in a small spool at your local quilting store, or by the 1500 yard mini-cone online if they don't carry it in the store.
Once you have plied your yarn, use it as weft; try not to pack it in like you're weaving a rug. When you wash your finished piece the soluble thread will, as the name says, vanish, leaving you with an untwisted and thus highly absorbent weft.

Happy spinning, weaving, dyeing.
Eileen