Aug 7 2022 - Sheets and Pillowcases

 

Sheets and pillowcases used to be made of cotton.  That's it.  That's all.  In winter, they would dry on the line into white cardboard sheets.  "Freeze-dried and snow bleached."  Now when I go into Sleep Country, there's everything imaginable.   I got the bamboo pillow cases - bamboo is used to make rayon.  Very smooth and cooling. And the trend now about smooth, soft and cooling in sheets and pillow cases.   And what's available today?  Not just cotton.  ,Cotton sateen is available - again very smooth and extra soft.  Sateen is different than satin - it is cotton and has more vertical threads than horizontal, so  it is more fragile.  Satin has very thin, high-thread-count synthetic materials such as nylon, polyester, or acetate.   The smoothest cotton is Egyptian cotton - it has extremely high thread count.  Generally a  high thread count also means warmer.   What about flax linen - they are said to be soothing and breathable, lightweight and sourced from fields in France and Belgium.  Doesn't that sound like a vacation as you sleep? We live in the time of luxury linens available to everyone.  Remember when the Westin Hotel introduced the "Heavenly Bed"?  That was just over twenty years ago.  It kicked off the luxury bed linen for all trend.  Now we're advised on how often we should replace everything in the bedroom - pillows?  1 to 2 years, sheets? 2 years, and so on.  Toss, toss.  That's part of luxury living. And today's picture continues the investigation of time.  Isn't time  elusive and strange?  I checked out this article in space.com  for a better understanding of time. They let me know it is also illusive.  Complicated.  I went to work on the floral clock and gave time a few twists.

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Jan 31 2020 - Those Little Clouds Called Cotton Balls

There was a cotton ball on the counter today - it was in a little bottle of pills. I wondered about its origin.  Something so ubiquitous was invented, but when?  As far back as 589 AD in China.  Toilet paper was made in part of cotton or other plant fibres such as hemp.   We move to Europe for our next reference to cotton balls. They were used for applying gold leaf - the evidence is an artists' manual in 1801.  The alternate tool recommended was a 'squirrel's tail'.   Then cotton balls were used for medical purposes by the late 1800s - that's where our reference starts.  I got to thinking about how we frame the origins of something. It occurs to me that this is the underlying question:  When were cotton balls mass produced?  I realize that my thinking around invention involves the industrial revolution as the origin of things. I expect I am typical.   We know that cotton was one of the first mass consumer commodities - after sugar and tobacco.  It was the textile revolution that fuelled the American economy - with the use of slave labour that caused the civil war. The story of cotton ball industrialization comes later - in the 20th century.  In 1937, Joseph A. Voss invented a machine that unravelled rolls of cotton  and cut them at a fixed interval into cotton pads. That is what started widespread consumption for first aid, personal hygiene and cosmetics. And today, cotton balls are not cotton anymore, mostly polyester or nylon. They still have the signature 'delicate crunch' - so soft and silky. Can you imagine this use of cotton balls?  There is a cotton ball diet. "In the cotton ball diet, those in search of a smaller waistline eat cotton balls soaked in juice to curb their appetite and dramatically cut their daily calorie intake. But eating cotton balls isn't just unappetizing. It's potentially deadly." -It causes intestinal obstructions or can become toxic in the stomach.  Our flower of the day is Bird of Paradise - a reliable winter bloomer for me in the conservatory greenhouse.

In the Land of Cotton

I went to the East Georgia Botanical Garden in Savannah, Georgia on the trip down to Florida.  I was startled by a crop in the vegetable garden.  Clearly it was cotton.  I'd never seen a cotton plant.  My picture has captured cotton that has been left on the plant over the winter, so we don't see the fluffy cellulose at its best.  It remains a major crop world-wide. Our next picture is one that we associate with Florida.  It is a cypress tree reflecting in the water - a wonderful natural landscape within the botanical garden.   Finally, no garden is complete without a reference to the human element of structures and buildings. The warm colour of the wall gives us a sense of the backdrop we can expect in tropical gardens.