Cotton is Ready

I was finally able to pick a ripe white cotton boll this past week.  You can see an almost ripe boll to the left in this picture, and one in process to the right.  This is the brown cotton, which is not ready yet.

I have several on each plant, both white and brown.  This continued hot weather will help them ripen.  We had the possibility of a monsoon rainstorm last week so I picked an opened boll of the white cotton.  I let it dry for a couple of days, then picked out the few seeds and carded the fiber.

This is the Pima cotton.  It was very easy to card, no junk. You can see the empty boll to my right on the table.  I carded this right before we went to the San Diego Natural History Museum for their annual PaleoServices event.  This event celebrates the past year of paleontological exploration in our region, and the Museum provides lots of displays of materials recently recovered.  Anyway....

Here is the carded rolag, the seeds (left) and the empty boll (right).  I will spin it this weekend.  It's too hot to go to Old Town in historic attire.