Fibre Feast Celebration August 15th

Thursday August 15th 5-8.30pm 

West Point Grey 

Community Centre 

4397 West 2nd Avenue 

Join resident artists Caitlin French and Sharon Kallis for an evening celebration of all things fibre at the 

Aberthau:flax=fibre+food gardenbed.

More info at:

http://aberthauflaxfibrefood.blogspot.ca/

Last post about the flax and linen production

Random photo, nothing to do with UW, because blogspot won't let me write anything today without posting a picture first. Yesterday, it was OK even though it wouldn't let me edit of do corrections, but today it's having a psychotic event again.

So this will be my last post for Urban Weaver. Dealing with blogspot takes hours of frustrated typing and retyping, playing around to see what its problem du jour is currently. USE WORDPRESS POTENTIAL BLOGGERS.

So, that's it from the Urban Cloth Project, aka Vancouver Flax2linen. You can find some of the stuff we do here http://aberthauflaxfibrefood.blogspot.ca/ but the things happening at McLean field house will not be reported. We will carry on processing flax there and don't forget we will be processing broom in a couple of weeks time (see post below this one) - please come and join us.

Basketry/cedar stuff continues as in the workshop/events page, and though the flax/broom/linen stuff will also continue, I will no longer be bloggin about it.

Happy spinning, weaving and dyeing,

Penny

The Aberthau Community Centre Flax Plot and Retting Pond

Here’s the latest picture of the 84sq m plot with its seedling flax and a range of dye plants.

Some of the dye plants are also edible (carrot tops, amaranth), and the marigolds not only dye but they draw aphids and carrot root fly away from the other plants.

Just out of the picture is a permanently flooded area that we are now using as a retting pond. We were given some old flax plants grown in Vancouver that the grower hadn't retted (thanks Louisa!). So we have a chance to do some trial runs at retting before our own crop is ready. We hope to learn how to do it successfully so we can pass the information on to all you grow-alongs.

The Urban Weavers at McLean field house didn't like the idea of the retting being done in the bath there as retting (AKA rotting) can be smelly, so the flooding problem at Aberthau has become a bonus feature.

Also, here's a picture of the antique fine grade hackle being scrutinised by the blacksmith from Burnaby Heritage Village and David Gowman (Legion of Flying Monkeys) to see how they can make us another one - but this time the coarse one we'll need for the first hackling.

Penny

Weeding your flax - now's a good time

Don't know about your flax, but ours is 10cm tall now, so we're going to take off our shoes and weed the plots.

 

It's important not to tread on the seedlings because they don't recover well from being knocked over - hence barefoot weeding. You only need to do this once, and since the weather will be sunny from Sunday for a few days, this is a good time.

 

You need to remove the weeds because they compete with the flax for light, water and soil nutrients, also it's much easier to harvest without weeds in the crop.

 

No rain means I can also bike or bus out to the Jericho plot and take some photos. I hear that Caitlin and Sharon have been working hard sowing the flax and planting the dye/food plant seedlings grown by the Park Board, so I can't wait to see it. I'll be taking along my pruning shears to tidy up the willow spinning wheel while I'm there. I'll post pictures of the plot next time.

 

Penny

 

Urban Cloth Project website for all things linen in Vancouver

I've been having some problems with using this blogspot because of my refusal to acquiesce to Evil Google's terms for downloading Chrome.

Because of that I'm now posting all the Flax Project posts on wordpress too, at www.urbanclothproject.wordpress.com.

So if you want to see all the flax posts only, that's the place to go. It will also be where all the flax growing and processing information will go to when I take my leave and hand the project over to Caitlin and Sharon later this year, after harvest.

That process has already started. I turn 60 this year and have decided to take things more slowly. I don't have the energy I used to. Sharon and Caitlin have energy enough between them to power a small continent for a year. Wait until you read about the things they have planned on August 17th at the Aberthau flax and dye plant plot!

More about this in a later post..................

More about Sharon here: http://sharonkallis.com/
More about Caitlin here: http://www.wewilltellyouallofoursecrets.com/

Penny

New flax, old flax

The weather has been perfect for flax planting!

McLean Park, Means of Production garden, my plot and I hope the other grow-alongs are all now planted, the Aberthau flax will be sown in May. I have 7sq m of flax sown. Not enough for a shirt, but I'm hoping for a furoshiki and a vest.

While building a living willow sculpture of a spinning wheel as a memorial for a friend* (more on this later), one of the group of friends weaving told us she had a lot of 20 year old dried flax plants that she had grown herself, in her basement. She is happy to donate them to the Urban Weaver and we are delighted to have them.

This means we will be able to start doing some retting experiments to see what works best, in advance of our own crop being ready. I expect the bath in the field house will be the first place we'll try. Expect more posts on what we find out!

* The willow spinning wheel

A very good friend of mine - spinner, weaver, dyer (all that good stuff!), died this year. Neither Sharon (Kallis) or I can work out which of us had the idea for a willow sculpture memorial, but her husband invited 5 of her close friends and with Sharon's expert design and leadership we wove a willow spinning wheel together.

The wheel is made if living willow, so new growth will need to be woven in, or clipped. This shouldn't be a problem, as the area of stones you can see on the left of the picture is the site of the new 84sq m flax and dye bed that will be built next week at Aberthau. That means there will always be someone around tending to the flax or the dye plants.

Here's what a friend who lives abroad (another willow weaver/spinner/dyer) wrote about the memorial:

Masami's Wheel is a lovely willow sculpture and a very fine memorial. It is fine tribute to Masami and a credit to all of the folks who made it.

If the sculpture develops into a group of young willow trees, it will become less of a sculpture, but a more lasting memorial.

If the remnants of the sculpture are allowed to develop into mature trees, they will be a feature in the landscape for decades.  

If these trees are periodically pollarded, they could become "veteran trees" and might survive for centuries

I love the idea of a "floating" memorial.  Will it last until next month/year/decade/century?  Who knows? That is the beauty of it!

  

 
Myself, I love the idea that her wheel, and eventually the willows that it generates, will stand watch over the flax and dye bed for us.

A lesson on being a peasant (and growing more flax)

Today I visited the back yard of a rental property that I've been guerilla gardening for more than three years. The soil was manured, top dressed with bone meal, weeded, raked and ready to plant potatoes today. In my cold frame are climbing zucchini growing, ready to plant there in June.

I started this garden to use as a way to show young renters how their food is grown. One of them became a keen gardener and researched and traded recipes with me to use what was growing. At his behest, I planted the herb garden there.

The rhubarb I planted almost four years ago was sprouting last week, and the herb bed, currant bushes, raspberries and strawberries were looking good. I weeded the flower bed  I established for the residents (lysimachia was up, as was the montbretia), talked with one of them about when they'd be able to help themselves to potatoes this year and went home.

When I arrived this week, I found a builder had dumped sewage contaminated soil and rubble all over the garden, killing the strawberries, several herb plants and burying the rhubarb and flower bed. He said he 'didn't see' anything growing there That means the residents (and myself) won't be able to have any vegetables this year and the fruit on the bushes will be too risky to eat.

So to rescue a bad situation, I'm going to put the whole area down to flax. That's about 5 times the amount I had intended to grow, but I can't see a better alternative. More linen for me this year!

It occurs to me that this is the type of situation that landless peasants face regularly. Random acts by landlords, willfull or ignorant destruction, our increasing number of extreme weather events caused by climate change, can mean they totally lose their food supply.

Luckily, I have a vegetable garden of my own at home and though the loss of all my hard work made me sit down amid the builder's rubble and cry, I shall continue to eat very well.  Meanwile rich countries are buying up land in Third World countries and turfing off the traditional farmers http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/apr/27/international-land-deals-database-africa.

Please read the link. Canada is in the top 10 list of countries displacing peasant farmers to get ownership of foreign land http://landportal.info/landmatrix/get-the-idea?img=top-10-investor-countries. This is being done by our government with our complicity. Let's not say we 'didn't see' what was going on.

Penny

Flax, terroir, homogeneity and globalisation

Someone who visited the Urban Weaver one evening, described a locally sourced fibre and dye sweater as having 'terroir'.

'Terroir', roughly translated and taken away from its use in describing wine, means 'of the place' or 'of the land'. She explained that she meant the mixture of localy sourced fibres, dyed using plants from Stanley Park made the garment uniquely 'of the land' where it came from and was being worn.

The availability of cheap oil and its evil spawn, globalisation, has meant the regionality that used to define our communities and places, no longer exists. It has made available to us the riches and rarities of the world's far flung places that were once only the priviledge of the wealthiest. How many suits did your great grandfather own? Unless he was rich, probably only one or two, because sourcing the fibre/fabric/labour to make them was expensive. Now we buy and throw away cheap cashmere sweaters with abandon, in willful ignorance of hard work and raw conditions it takes to raise, process and make that luxury fibre.

Now that we can have the things that were once only for the rich (*alert: We are the rich. According to the UN we are the 12th richest country out of 193 of the world. The country producing cashmere is 163rd, and the one processing it is 93rd) nothing is special anymore. We rich countries can source anything we want. Result? We all dress in the same stuff, and find ourselves very boring to look at.

We must find ourselves boring to look at because we waste even more oil travelling to poor countries to look at their regional dress. They take pride in wearing clothes that distinguish them from other countries, even from other villages. We on this continent just wear the same stuff that we all source from a handful of big box retailers. We  have no regional dress, no regional pride in our clothing. Our clothing has no terroir. We look uniformly boring.

You can reclaim that regionality and produce unique clothing by growing and processing local flax. The Urban Weaver has everything you need to do that for free. We have seed for you, will soon have the equipment for you to process it into flax, and will teach you to spin, weave and dye it. The oil use will be tiny, the carbon footprint (unless you drive to the field house) small, and no one will have been exploited in the production of your clothing.

There's still a few weeks to join in. Why not exert your uniqueness and regional pride - your terroir?

Penny

Drug dealers help out the flax project

The flax seed has been weighed out for all the various plots that will be growing around the city.

Sounds like and easy thing to do, but at a sowing rate of 12-14g per sq. m., weighing out 13g packets of seed for the smaller plots was hard. None of us had a kitchen scale that could accurately measure such small amounts, and the consequences of being 5g out in the weighing would mean a 1 sq.m. plot that was either 50% too dense (so the flax grows too tall and falls over) or 50% too sparse (so the flax grows side branches and the fibre is no good).

I won't tell you who among us went to a marijuana supplier to borrow their very accurate scale for a few hours, but it was perfect for the job.

FYI, the following places will be growing flax this year:

Science World
Means of Production Garden
Capillano College
McLean Park
Aberthau Community Centre

and 6 local gardeners.

The Aberthau plot is the largest at 84 sq.m, but only a third of that will be flax this year. The other two-thirds will be down to dye plants or vegetables that produce dye as part of a 4 year crop rotation. The smallest plot, about 0.5sq.m.) will be on Pender St, near International Village.

Penny

PS Sowing won't happen for a few more weeks yet as there's still a high risk of frost and the soil isn't warm enough yet.

Flax to furoshiki!

At last, after many months of trials and sampling, I’ve finally found a way that even the more beginning of beginner can make cloth from their flax.

The standard Urban Weaver chopstick/toy wheel spindle spins flax very well. It only takes a very short while to make enough thread to make a 4cm square on a home made pin loom.

I’ll post up the details of where on the internet to find a jig and instructions for these lovely little looms later.
Once you have completed your square and taken it off the loom, put it into dilute bleach for a few minutes.

When it's gone paler, rinse it and dye it!

Here’s my dyes out in the sun this weekend. Takes a day to dye a square. I used blackberry juice from berries I canned last year, ditto cherry juice, onion skins, dried weld leaves, tansy and safflower.






Then just rinse your squares again, iron them and sew them together. That's the cloth you can see in the top picture.

And in case you think it isn’t possible to produce a big article of clothing this way, here’s a shawl I spun, wove, dyed, sewed together. It’s made of all local fibres from angora rabbit, to bison fibre (from the bison meat guy at the Terminal Ave farmer’s market) and ‘chiengora’ (malamut cross hair from the dog pound). The dyes are all from local plants too (apart from two dark blue indigo squares).

Flax and linen day at Joybilee Farm, Greenwood, August 10th

If you’re planning a trip this August but haven’t decided where to go, you might consider going to Greenwood, BC for Joybilee Farm’s annual flax day http://kettleriverartsfestival.com/events/joybilee-farm-linen-festival/.

You get a chance to see them processing last year’s flax crop, see this year's flax fields http://joybileefarm.com/about-joybilee-farm/linen-demonstration-garden/, spin some flax, make pine needle baskets with waxed linen thread and look at some of the lovely linen clothing grown and made in Grand Forks by the Doukhobor community. The historians from the Boundary museum (well worth a visit if you get time), will also be at Joybilee talking about the history of flax growing in the area.
For those living sustainably , there is a Greyhound bus from Terminal Avenue Greyhound Station, leaving at 6.30 am, that gets to Greenwood at 3.40pm. There is a daily bus from Greenwood at 9.10 am that goes straight past Joybilee farm, but appears to stop 6.4km past the farm entrance. I did ask Joybilee if they had any more information about the bus and where it stops, but they tell me they've no idea as they never use it.

Or you could try this - about 10km short of Greenwood, is Mile 0 on the Kettle Valley Railway Trail. This is the jumping off point to take the trail to see the rebuilt Myra Canyon trestles. So if you’re coming by bus, bring your bike along, bike the trail to see the trestles. The next day you can take the Greyhound on from Midway to Greenwood and bike the 7.8km from there to the farm.

Penny

Do something revolutionary - grow your own shirt and be part of the revival of linen growing in Vancouver

Here’s a summary of what’s going on for anyone who wants to be part of the local linen revival.

We’re going to be growing flax this year at the Means of Production garden http://moparrc.com/, a garden I’ve annexed at the back of a rental property and a couple of Park Board sites around Vancouver. If you see a plot of lovely blue flowers at McLean Park or Aberthau – it’s a future linen shirt in bloom. We also have several people growing flax either at home or in their community garden plot, using this blog to tell them what to do and when to plant.
Flax was once grown all over BC, as far north as Bella Coola - we have the ideal climate for it. Families planted a small plot of it every few years to provide the material to make garments, bed sheets etc. As it's such a hard wearing fibre, it wasn't necessary to plant every year. Being able to process, spin and weave your own linens wasn't an art, it was just what you had to do if you wanted something other than woollen underwear (scratchy!) and blankets.

Caitlin ffrench (knitter, weaver, spinner, dyer and much more) will be partnering with me to grow at MOP, and she'll take the project forward in 2014 to grow more flax at Trillium Park and various other City pieces of land. Flax needs a 5 year rotation so she'll be growing dye plants in between the flax years.

The flax processing equipment that we will be building this spring will be stored at the McLean field house until Trillium Park's artist space is ready and will be available for anyone to use. If you want to grow some flax in your garden (it has such pretty flowers!) let me know. Flax seed from the store won't work, it needs to be a specific fibre producing type (I can provide you with small amounts of Elektra flax seed if you come to the field house). You could grow some at home and use the processing equipment to make your own linen.


Some details on flax cultivation

Here’s the type of soil and site you’ll need:

1. Location and moisture - flax likes to be shrouded in moisture during the
   growing season. This isn't usually a problem in Vancouver, but you may need to water the seedlings if we have a dry spell in spring.
2. Location and wind - flax will rot if it falls over. You need to either grow it in a place where it's sheltered from the wind (or animals walking through the plot) or put up a short fence. Willow or bamboo sticks put around the plot edge would work.
Flax doesn’t like to be shaded by trees, or be in waterlogged areas.

Time line for growing flax and making linen　
　
The time line is:

1.Prepare the seed bed by removing weeds, and adding a layer of compost and bone meal for the potassium and phosphate needed to produce fibre. Don’t put any nitrogen based fertilizer on, as this makes weak stalks which will fall over (lodge). Best done right now, but at the very least by the end of March.

2.Rake the seed bed (and remove any extra weeds that have grown) just before planting. Seed planting will be in April/May depending on the temperatures. Watch this blog to see when we plant ours. Spread the seed by broadcasting (throwing it!). Firm the seeds in by pressing the rake head onto the soil over the entire plot (you can do this with your feet too).

3.If we get a dry spell during germination, the seeds will need water – again, watch this blog and I’ll tell you when/if that’s needed.

4.When the plants are 10cm high, weed the plot barefoot (so as not to damage the plants – they die if they get knocked over).

5.  90-100 days after germination the plants are in full flower..

6.  10 days after that you can harvest – more about that in the blog as we get closer to harvest time. You can follow along and harvest when we do……


So check out this blog for updates on the flax growing process. I'll also be posting photos and details of how the building of the scutcher, brake machine and hackles are coming along.

Penny

Urban Cloth Project a.k.a. The Flax Project

The ground preparation on two new flax plots

The flax plot at Means of Production garden is now dug, weeded, and bone meal added for phosphate, ready for planting thanks to hard work by Sharon, Caitlin and Arlen.

There is a medium size tree in the SE corner, but we're hoping it won't shade the crop and result in poor fibre production.

If any grow-along folks haven't yet prepared the soil for planting you need to get to it. If the weather stays this mild, we may be into seed sowing by next month.

The plot at McLean Park has been double dug and bone meal put on the soil. Many thanks to Sharon, David, Martin and especially Cindy, the McLean Park gardener.

Sadly, the soil is full of stones, not very deep and on top of a clay pan, so it's going to need a layer of compost of some kind and extra soil to make it viable. We're hoping the park Board will deliver a load of soil and some leaf mulch to give some organic matter to the soil and make a decent seed bed for flax seed germination.

This plot will be shaded by several trees, so we will have to see how this affects the flax. Flax should be grown where there is full sun.

It's also going to be hard to stop the many off-leash dogs that are brought to this park from flattening the seedlings or lodging the flax plants. It will need a good fence around it. For now, until the soil and leaf mulch are delivered, yellow tape will have to suffice.




We have finally decided on a name for the project - The Urban Cloth Project. This takes into account the work that Urban Weaver has already done on the possibility of using invasive species like broom for cloth, the 'chiengora' from the grooming of the finer coated dogs in the local pound, and urban yarn harvesting. The latter is buying machine made sweaters from charity stores, unravelling them, plying the yarn and either reknitting or weaving with it to make new garments.

Penny

Viking linen techniques

For those of you interested in linen history, last year there was an interesting find of textiles and textile tools in a Viking grave.

Details of what they found and an overview of how linen was spun and woven (and wool too) can be found here:

http://forest.gen.nz/Medieval/articles/Oseberg/textiles/TEXTILE.HTM

Seems like they spun their flax on supported bottom whorl spindles.

Penny

Spinning flax on a drop spindle - how to avoid the 'drop' part

Those of you future flax growers without a spinning wheel, take heart. The first 3200 years of making textiles were all managed without one.

The viking ships that sailed hundreds of miles on colonising voyages were all made possible by women with drop spindles, spinning the flax to make the linen to weave into the sails. Makes the effort involved in producing tea towel seem pretty minimal by comparison.

Dry or Wet Spindling?

I have dry spindled flax. It is possible to do if you concentrate hard. I didn't find it easy and there was a greater emphasis on the 'drop' than the 'spindle' in my efforts. Wet spinning cuts down the yarn breakages during spinning, and produces a smoother thread. It also makes areas where you have to join in new fibre much stronger and less prone to breaking. In the picture above is a ball of predrafted flax (top right), some wet spindled thread (botton right) and a woven sample of the wet spindled yarn. I don't use the predrafting method anymore - that was just a trial. I find spinning from the fold of a flax 'twist' (see photo in last post) works just as well. I can see no difference in quality between my spindle spun and wheel spun samples, the only difference is the speed of production. That being said, with wheel spinning I'm limited to spinning at home, while with a spindle I can spin wherever I happen to be at the time. My friend Billy spindle-spun some lovely linen on the train back from Seattle last week. He used his coffee cup to hold the water he needed to wet his fingers as he worked.

This, by comparison, is a picture of my dry spindled flax. Much hairier, and I suspect it would be a pain to weave on anything larger, as the warp would tangle.

I use a top whorl spindle (like the egyptians) to spin linen. One with a long spin, which usually means a whorl with a weighted outside edge for centripetal force, is ideal. However, my favourite spindle of this description was borrowed by someone in an Urban Weaver workshop in the fall, packed in her move to Toronto, and despite many requests has never been returned to me. For those of you who were lucky enough to get hold of a Don George (of Quesnel) spindle before he stopped making them - they're ideal. The strength of the flax in resisting twist is easily overcome by the amount of spin it is possible to get with this spindle, meaning that it doesn't easily start to untwist as the spindle revolutions slow. Another advantage of this spindle is that it has a long shaft, so you can stand and spindle using your feet to produce the spindle rotation. Great for when you're standing in a line up, or spindling as you walk along. However, as I no longer have this spindle, I used one of my hand made chop stick and wooden bead spindles for the samples. Sigh. Any chance of getting my spindle back, Sharon De Souza?

A small pot of water by your side while spindling is all the other equipment you'll need. Just moisten your left fingers (for right handers) or which ever fingers you use to pinch and smooth twist. I carry a small screw top plastic pot and fill it from my water bottle. I also use rain water if waiting at a bus stop - just hold your hand out, or dip you fingers in the rain drops on the bus shelter!

Another advantage of wet spinning is that when you reel off the yarn, it has 'set'. There's very little twisting and doubling back on itself like a wool yarn would. The disadvantage of this is that it's harder to ply (if you intend to ply). Yarn with very little 'energy', doesn't ply well. However, if you're intending to weave with your yarn it doesn't need to be plied, and that lack of 'energy' really helps in warp making.

Next time - spinning some extra fine flax fibre I bought in Seattle (proper high quality 'line' flax with a staple length of 14cm!), and weaving linen using my old tapestry frame and some home-made string heddles.

Penny

Wet spinning flax and how to avoid being a spindster forever

Having abandonned the King Tut method of flax spinning, I'm going to stick with my tried and true personal favourite method.

For you wheel spinners, wet spinning is probably the best way to go. I'll get to spindle spinning in another post.

Starting with one of these – a twist of hackled flax, lay it on a damp towel on your lap and fan one end out while keeping the other tucked into the towel. If you're spinning from a strick, the unfanned out ends at usually tucked into your belt or tied round your waist with the strick ribbon.

If you need to stop spinning for any reason, wrap it up in the towel. That keeps the flax moist and reduces breakage if you're spinning a fine yarn.
Keep a pot of water close by and keep wetting your fingers as you spin. This keeps the yarn smooth and strong. It also helps to join in more fibre if the yarn breaks. Spit is always an alternate option, but I worry about the bacteria count of my frequently dropped flax.

I like to spin on my double treadle wheel with a 20:1 ratio, but you can pretty much spin flax on anything. Ideally, I'd use double drive so the pull on was smooth and not too harsh. However, I usually spin wool and prefer Scottish tension for that and I'm way too lazy to change the drive band between projects.

The yarn you spin will be great for weaving. It will be smooth – no hairy bits to catch in the warp. The more even you can keep the diameter and amount of twist the better. Linen is worse than wool (IMO) for twist running to the thinner sections. That can create overspun parts that look weird in the weaving and are a pain to deal with when you ply. Young women's marriage prospects used to be judged by the evenness of their linen spinning.

You can see from my sample that my spinning wasn't very even at all - I would have be destined to remain a spindster if a young man was using this sample to assess my worth as a potential wife!

I suggest getting some practice in with long fibres before you start spinning any of your precious crop this year. It will increase your chances of producing a fine heirloom, though I doubt it will enhance your chances of finding a partner these days.

You can practise at the field house on the flax fibre bought from Biolin. It arrived today, along with the flax seed, while I was out, so has been delivered to the post office for collection. I have yet to work out how I will get 10kg of fibre and 5kg of seed from Chinatown to the field house, especially while the New Year celebrations are ramping up, but hope to get it to McLean park by next week.

Penny

Trying out ancient Egyptian and flax fairy tale spinning techiques.

I thought I'd start the review of ways to spin linen by looking at the most time consuming of the techniques. Perhaps I'm not as skilled as an ancient Egyptian, but my results reproducing their methods were disappointing compared to the less complex ones.

The linen spinning process in ancient Egypt began with a woman making spliced roving from the hackled fibres. This is where you draw out the fibres into a fine, very slightly twisted line using wet fingers. The ball of roving is then given to the spinner who uses a drop spindle to spin a thread.

Here's a picture of some linen roving:

http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/textil/tools.html

And here's a picture of the whole process of linen production in ancient Egypt - woman 5 is making the roving, woman 6 is spinning it:

http://www.ewephoricfibers.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/egyptian-spinning.png

Really dextrous spinners could spin with a spindle in each hand, as is seen in this picture. The balls of roving are behind them, in pots with water in, to keep the line moist:

http://www.artisaneuro.com/index.php?AboutLinen_History2=yes

Here's a model showing all that from an Egyptian tomb. These linen 'factories' were always in the underground parts of the Egyptian buildings because the humidity was higher there. Wet linen thread is stronger than dry thread, so there was less propensity for the thread to break during the weaving process:

http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/textil/meketre2.jpg


Here, for comparison is what I managed (with one spindle at a time!):

At the top right, is my ball of wet drafted roving. I did this by drawing the tops out by hand, dipping my fingers in water as I went along, and putting a slight twist in using my thumb.

Below it is some spun yarn, and to the left, my woven, 2 ply sample.

It was easier when the roving split to use the water to rejoin the ends. When dry spinnng, if the yarn breaks, it's very hard to draft in new fibres to rejoin it. Traditionally, this is when the spinner would run the thread end over her bottom lip and use spit to hold the join together. You may remember the Grimm's fairy tale about the three spinning fairies, one with a braod foot from treadling, one with a big thumb from twisting the fibre and one with a bottom lip that hung to her chest from licking the fibre. The amylase enzyme in the saliva makes the starches in the linen dissolve, then as it dries they form a strong bond.

My spun yarn was much hairier (scratchy!) when I predrafted for some reason. The spinning was quicker, and there was less breakage, but when you add in the predrafting, the whole thing was much slower. I also found it harder to get a fine thread this way.

The resulting woven sample was softer, but hairier and the textile wasn't as fine as the other methods I tried.

If I was going to spin my flax crop later this year for a knitting project where softness is important and fineness isn't, I would use this wet predrafting method. For a fine woven textile, unless I could find an ancient Egyptian (or three fairies) to give me lessons, I think I'd use a different technique.

Penny

Spinning and weaving linen - some samples

Now that the flax seed has been ordered and also a 10kg 'brick' of grade 1 flax shive (partially hackled flax) for Monday night Urban Weavers to try out, I took the time to make some linen samples this week. Here's the results of my experiments using some unbleached flax tops left over from a previous project:

I tried combinations of wet spinning, dry spinning, spindle spinning, wheel spinning, washing, on singles and 2 ply woven samples.

I wanted to get a feel for what the end product of the UW flax project might feel/look like.

As it takes 5 minutes to upload each photo to this blog, and I'm not noted for my patience, I'll write separately about each of the samples with a photo in upcoming posts.

At this point, suffice it to say that you can spin and weave very nice linen, which gets softer with each wash, using only basic equipment like a top whorl spindle and small pocket loom.

Penny

Anyone wanting any flax seed?

I’m just finalising the details of the seed order now. So far we have the following flax plots:

2 plots at Means of Production garden of about 20x20 feet that Caitlin ffrench is taking on

a 5x20 plot at McLean Park feet that Cindy, the Parks Board gardener has graciously offered to help with

a 10x4 plot at my ‘other’ garden

a 5x20 plot at Aberthau Community Centre

and a possible plot in Strathcona Community Gardens


If I’ve missed you off the list, please post into the comments below and remind me!
　
After some very generous offers of land by the Parks Board, we decided on just one plot at Aberthau. It was a hard decision, but we decided to make this a trial year, and add in extra plots next year once we have more experience. Also, as flax can only be grown on a 5-year rotation, this year’s plots will need to be planted with something else until 2018.

We also have limited time (and of course no transportation) for getting to far flung, transit unfriendly places like Jericho, though the Parks Board have kindly agreed to do the soil prep and planting here. We will just take on the initial weeding and then the harvest. Look out for a harvest party out there in the fall with a picnic, a band, and lots of fun….

As to the crop rotation, I suggest the intervening crop years could be a year of red clover, to replace the nitrogen. It has the benefit of dyeing a lovely gold colour with aluminum sulphate. Woad would make a great year 2/3 crop (as long as it isn’t allowed to seed!), and a 4^th year of local indigenous dye plants like Hypericum perforatum or perhaps another legume that also yields a dye. Anyone got any suggestions?
　
　
　
　
　　
　
　　
　

　
　　

Buying your Elektra flax seed ready for the spring.....

‘Blue Monday’ seems like a great time to be thinking about seeds and planting – new beginnings.

If you’re growing along with Urban Weaver this year, here’s my email from Randy Cowan at Biolin with purchase information for your Elektra flax seed. Good day,
Thank you for your interest in the art of flax fibre growing!
The seed prices, which are valid to March 31, 2013, are:
0.0 to 4.9 kgs -> $10/kg
5.0 to 24.9 kgs -> $5.00/kg
greater than 25 kgs (sold only in 25 kg bags) -> $3.00/kg
Prices do not include GST or shipping
we accept cheque or paypal payment before shipment
Thank you,
Randy Cowan
Director of Operations
Biolin Research Inc
161 Jessop Avenue
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Canada
S7N 1Y3
Phone: (306) 668-0130
Fax: (306) 668-0131
Website: http://biolin.sk.ca
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/biolinresearch
Google+: https://plus.google.com/106224068896437970548
twitter: @flaxfibernshive
And just a reminder from a previous post of what he said about how much seed you’ll need:

The seed needed depends on the seeding method, if you are broadcasting (scattering) the seed then you will want to aim for a 2,000 plants per meter squared, this will make the plants compete and thus will give you a consistent small stem, easy to ret and decorticate. If you are row seeding the competition would not be as good as broadcasting, the loss in emergent plant count is also not consistently known as the seed now has to compete with its neighbor in the row as well as the environment.

Fiber Flax Seed is 5 grams per 1,000 seeds (Elektra is a fiber variety)
Assume a 90% vigor/emergence because not all seed reacts to the environment the same.
So, for every square meter seeded with fiber flax = 2,000 seed desired seed times 5 grams per 1,000 seeds times 90% vigor/emergence = 12 grams per meter square.


　
　
And if Blue Monday just makes you want to curl up with a book, here are few suggestions from the Vancouver Library shelves:

The Magic of Linen Flax Seed to Woven Cloth By Heinrich, Linda
An excellent book all about flax growing in BC over the ages with interesting photos and lots of information.

Linen & Lace Simple-to-sew Homestyle Charm Using New and Vintage Lace By Sabatier, Chantal Something you can read to help you decide what to do with your flax crop.

Linen Heirlooms The Story and Patterns of A Collection of 19th Century Handwoven Pieces with Directions for Their Reproduction By Gallagher, Constance Dann
How to make some lovely linen pieces for yourself.

20th Century Linens and Lace A Guide to Identification, Care, and Prices of Household Linens By Scofield, Elizabeth
And how to look after the linen that you’ve grown, processed and woven yourself so that your grandchildren will be able to marvel at your skill!

Penny