Making of Malkha

Issue #002, Monsoon, 2019                                                                      ISSN: 2581- 9410 Few people are aware that the pre-spinning technology of cotton yarn making is damaging to cotton. After cotton from the fields is ginned in ginning mills, it is baled in steam presses for transport to spinning mills. Baling compresses trash such as bits of seed coat or leaf into the cotton and makes the soft lint into a hard, compact mass, like a block of wood. This hard mass has then to be unbaled and brought back to its original soft, fluffy state which in the spinning mill is done through the blow-room. By the time the delicate fibres of cotton have gone through these violent processes they are no longer springy but limp and lifeless and have lost a large part of their good qualities. A group of us realized this some years ago, and took up an experiment to spin cotton on a small scale in a way which would cut out some of the damaging processes and which would make yarn specifically for handloom weaving.