Texas is cotton growing country. Passing along harvested fields, it still looked like snow had fallen at some point in the last week and was now a bit dirty, but it was cotton that hadn’t been picked up by the combine and was left in the field just like corn kernels or wheat. Reading about the history of cotton and how it was ginned was incredible as was the beauty of the cotton gins themselves. These are two photos of two gins showing the craftsmanship, beautiful.

So, what can you  make from a bale of cotton which weighs about 480 pounds? 1,217 men’s t-shirts, 313,600 $100 dollar bills, 249 bed sheets, 3,085 diapers, 215 jeans, 4,321 mid-calf socks, 765 men’s dress shirts, 690 terry bath towels, 21,960 women’s handkerchiefs! Or, you could mix and match.