Welcome to Gaia! ::

Cotton.

So I went to a fiber convention and decided to take up spinning. Unfortunately I couldn't afford any wool or anything like that and I was impatient so I decided to work with what I had on hand: Pharmacy style cotton balls.



Yup, those kind. You can unravel them pretty easily into a nice roving-like ribbon of fluff that doesn't really need to be carded, just drafted.

Here's some unrolled and partially unrolled balls.


So yeah, turns out cotton can't be spun like other fibers with a spindle like this because the strands are too short so I had to do it a little more hands-on but I was able to do fairly well:



My newly spun yarn is about the size of 4-ply worsted but it's got some fairly chunky bits and some much narrower bits but I think it looks great for being my very first yarn and in pharmacy cotton of all things.

I can't wait until I'm done, set, and dyed. I think I'll crochet a bracelet from it and wear it always!

I can't wait to spin something like wool, silk, or rabbit angora.

Thank you. So far I've been on the cheapo route so I'm probably going to use my gel food dyes and make it something mottled and multi-colored. I've read cotton doesn't like to take colors as well as animal fibers but oh-well, if it's good enough for eggshells, it's good enough for cotton. XD

You might be able to stain it - slightly - with food dye and vinegar but it won't take like you're thinking of. I tried it with some coasters I made out of cream/white colored cotton and they're only faintly the color I wanted. The only problem is that I'm pretty sure if I washed them out again, even that color would fade out. Instead of binding to the fibers the dye is just sort of... sitting there.