A Trip to the Fiber and Bioplymer Research Institute

Field trips are fun, and this one was no exception, even if it was kind of early and I was sleepy. Anyway, if I am going to be working with fabric for a living I might as well know where it come from and the limitations of it, hence the trip to the Fiber and Biopolymer Research Plant.

This map is terrible, and a waste of time. Don't MapQuest this place either, it sends you to Narnia.

 

We had a Tour Guide whose name I wish I knew, but he was very nice although a little hard to understand. It's cool though, because it made me pay attention more and kept me awake. He started out with taking us to where they store their raw samples that they get.

It looked like cloud with boxes on them.

The cotton they were working with needed to be cleaned so he showed us how that process was done.

He was feeling casual

This opens the cotton up to get it ready to clean.

This it comes out through here, and moved to another machine.

This cleans out the 'trash' in the cotton.

The cotton fiber is then spun into a loose rope, which is amazingly soft, but cannot be used for anything.

They load then into drums to be moved to another room.

He was showing us the fibers stretched end to end. It was cool!

Then the fibers are spun into actual yarn or string!

I have no idea what this is. I just thought it was legiiiiit!

Then of course, as most of us know, the yarn gets put on to a loom and turned into actual fabric!!

This one was broken.

So he showed us this one instead.

Talking about warp and fill, and stuffs.

Anywho, it was a fun trip, but it was cold, and I needed some food afterwords.