Spinning Plant Hair

Day 153: Many of my fiberarts crafts tend to be seasonal, depending on the amount of available natural light and the colour of the material with which I am working. When spinning wool on my Louët wheel, it's a simple matter to change the contrast by laying a lighter or darker piece of fabric across my knees. However, with the charkha wheel, I'm working against a backdrop of grey carpet, so at least with tan cotton fiber, I need more "window light" on the developing thread. I put the charkha away last fall, and it sat on the bookshelf for the dark months of winter. I pulled it out a few days ago, spun a few chunks of roving just to be sure I hadn't lost my touch, and then it occurred to me that making my own punis (a miniature version of the rolags familiar to wool spinners) would allow me to spin longer without having to fuss with prepping another bit of cotton. I had not spun from a puni previously because they are rarely (if ever) available in any colour other than white, and at a much higher price per ounce than dyed roving. Having worked through the many quirks of spinning with cotton told me to beware of lumps and to roll the "mini-rolags" loosely, both easy to achieve by manually loading the roving onto a 2" x 4" section of a single cotton carder. Then, with the tips of the cotton fibers pinched between two knitting needles, I rolled the batt off the carder teeth. It was much easier to do than anticipated, and in no time, I had a boxful of punis ready to be spun. After making a few tweaks to the way I handled the feed of unspun fiber, I found to my delight that spinning from punis was a huge improvement on spinning from roving. After an hour or so, I had a full tahkli spindle, ready to ply with the thread on the one I'd put away last fall.