Elvira suggested that I should write about coloured cotton plants.

When we lived in the west, I grew lots of ordinary cotton just as a garden plant. We would pop a bush in anywhere in the spring and then they grew with quite an attractive flower a bit like a single hibiscus. When the bolls were full and cracked, the cotton fibre within would look fairly dry. We would hand pick the bolls and just pull the fibre out. You soon realize where the saying "cotton picking" came from because each boll would have ten or more seeds which we just picked out by hand. Any suggestions for doing this more easily would be welcome.

I then received some coloured cotton seeds which are naturally mutated into shades of green and brown. I had always known that these mutations existed but obviously they are relentlessly weeded out of commercial cotton crops because the slightest dark fibre in bales of cotton can cause endless trouble.

The greens went from pale green through to a teal green colour and the browns went from creamy champagne to an onion skin brown. When the fibre is sorted into greens and browns, blending with a card comber can make the colour more uniform when spun.

After picking the seeds out, all these seeds can be used the next year. In the west, I would plant them in spring for a long growing season. But since trying to grow cotton at the coast I have found that the wet season plays havoc with the quality of the fibre that a boll will produce. I have been thinking that I might plant them in mid summer so that they can do their growing during the wet season and by the time they have flowered and set bolls, it will have dried off a bit in autumn to make the fibre production more successul.

I would probably anticipate putting them in in late November or early December. I wonder how that will go?

And if you hand pick the bolls, your plants will keep producing for years unlike the commercial cotton plants where they kill/ defoliate before harvesting. I think a bit of frost might knock the plant back a bit but they seem fairly hardy and are certainly not soft little plants to look at - there can be a lot of hard wood in them so they may come through a hard winter for you.

Cotton is hard to spin unlike wool. Wool fibre has the natural little scales which cause the fibre to catch onto itself and spin into a nice yarn. Also, spinning wool in the grease before washing also makes it easier to spin. Cotton is not greasy and its fibrous scales are smaller so to spin cotton on a spinning wheel requires a very high tension and spinning speed to give lots of twists per inch.

I would like someone to try spinning cotton on a drop spindle and tell me how that works. I haven't tried it but it might be easier. Also, I wonder if adding an oil to it would facilitate the spinning.

I find the best use for home grown cotton is to blend with wool for spinning, thereby making a lighter yarn that is a bit softer and cooler.

Some australian cotton growers are growing coloured cotton organically and selling a woven fabric which is quite beautiful. Just google organic fabric australia and they will come up. They are using the coloured cotton with cream/ white to weave a gingham check and doing imaginative things with other organic fibres.

Have a look for that and enjoy.