Bullshit Crafting Product: 001 Decorative Cotton Bolls

Oh what serendipity. I'm in the middle of processing, dyeing, and spinning the cotton that my father and I have grown ourselves. I've also been researching this wonderful fiber to better understand how to do all of these things to it. Then I run into these things, real cotton bolls tied to a wreath or tied to floral wire in a spray. You would think I would be excited about seeing these things, like, "Oh hey, here's a thing I'm totally into right now, made into home decor! I should decorate my house in cotton bolls and then everyone will call me "The Cotton Gal', and I'll be all about that cotton all the time. Oh that wacky LuRo and her cotton!"

Certainly a Good Use of Materials

Lately I have been posting away about my dye experiments with cotton lint, but I'm up to other things as well you know. I made the mistake of liking penguins as a child and people still keep giving me penguin things. I'm not about to start another "thing" ever again. Anyway, being into other things, I reluctantly made a trip to the nearest craft store because there was a thing I needed.

To get to the thing I needed, I had to walk through the now requisite bins and shelves of things that are not crafts. The cotton wreaths and sprays were one of the many non-craft things that were there. Oh sure, you could incorporate those sprays into a floral arrangement, or you could embellish the wreath with other bullshit, but we're cutting really close to Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade territory, and at least she has the excuse of needing to feed herself and her family. No one needs to glue shit to a wreath under such duress that you have to buy a pre-made wreath much like how Sandra Lee makes cake out of pre-made cake.

So instead of moving on with my errand and ignoring the garbage, I stuck around to inspect it because I'm an asshole and love being mad about inconsequential things. The wreath already had a dead mosquito embedded in the fibers. Lovely. Now imagine this thing hanging on your front door or in your house for a season, getting covered in dust and accumulating spiders. How the hell are you going to clean it? Smacking the dust out or vacuuming up the cobwebs would destroy it.

Don't even ask me if I touched it because of course I touched it. It's made of real cotton bolls, and yeah, I kinda pulled the fibers out a little. It's not the greatest cotton. The staple length is pretty short but it is very white. At the price of $29.99, it's certainly not cost effective to rescue the cotton in the wreaths to spin them. The tag also says its made in China, but who knows where the cotton was actually grown, but it was grown somewhere, and in that place the soil was tilled and watered and cotton was planted. It was harvested and instead of being used for making fabric, cotton balls, or topping of the tips of ear swabs, these bolls got sent to some factory where they got tied up to a wreath or twigs of floral wire so that you can display it in your house for a limited amount of time before it gets dirty and ends up in a landfill. It was pretty crappy cotton, so maybe it was going to get tossed anyway, but considering how white and attractive the bolls are, I think not. There's a chance this crap was grown specifically for this application. What a waste.

Anyway let's wrap this up:

Bullshit Scorecard

Dubious qualification as crafting supplies	-5
Great spider-house	-8
Bizarro misuse of materials	-8
Grand Total	-21