Flax SpinningNewsletter for Twelfth Night A.S. XXXVII
Recently I attended a great class taught by Diana McAuliffe of the Spinners and Weavers Guild of NSW on flax spinning. We were taught to spin line, the long strands of flax fibre that are taken from the stem of the plant; tow, the shorter fibres that are left behind; and rovings, the commercially prepared short fibres that are combed into a fairly smooth roving similar to those available from wool or cotton. I'd like to give some notes on line spinning here, as it is the art that carries the most mystery, but it's not that hard if you put a bit of work into it. First, you must prepare your line flax. It is sold in bundles called stricks. There is an article in itself on choosing flax, but we'll save that for later. If your line is prepped, you should not need to hackle it, but if there are rough patches, you will. Talk with your supplier about this as hackling is yet another article, and another piece of equipment. The piece of equipment that you will need to spin flax is a distaff. Some wheels come with these upright sticks jutting above the wheel and frame. It's very easy to make your own from a piece of dowel, though. You will have seen women spinning with these in Gothic illuminations and Flemish paintings, often their distaffs were simple sticks, tucked under the arm or supported through a hole in their spinning stools. Attaching the flax to a distaff, called dressing the distaff, is something of a trick and for the beginner flax spinner, a cone distaff is the easiest to work from. You can make your own with either two of the large (about 30cm high) plastic cones that yarn is wound onto commercially, or some cardboard and newspaper. For the latter, take 1m2 of light cardboard or thick paper and make a cone shape that is about 40-45cm high and 20-25cm diameter across the bottom. Tape the shape. Trim the bottom roughly flat, then stuff with newspaper at the top, place it onto your upright distaff and pack the paper around it. If you are using a piece of free dowel as your distaff, about 150cm is high enough and you should tie it securely to your rear chair leg in two places, as the tension while you are spinning will make it tilt annoyingly if it is tied in just one. If you are using the plastic cones, you will dress one cone, then slip the second one loosely over the top. Flax is spun off the bottom of the cone shapes to keep the fibres from tangling. Take your strick of flax and separate out a 'finger', about 25g of flax. A lot of flax is sold in 100g stricks, so one quarter. It's about the amount of fine hair that would make up one part of a plait. You can go up to 100g at one time, but less is easier while you learn. Comb your own fingers gently through the flax, making sure there are no rough patches that would need to be hackled. In the absence of a hackler, you can use a steel cat comb if you have to, just comb smoothly but firmly to remove the hard vegetative material while keeping the fibres smooth. Now, hold the finger of flax by the root end, which is the roughest end, and shake the fibres out gently. Divide the finger into four, each bundle should be quite small. Spread each bundle of fibres separately into an oblong of finely criss-crossed fibres. The fibres should still be arranged very roughly along the one horizontal axis that we will call the oblong's length. Along this axis the fibres form an interlocking mesh, the width of which should be about the same as the height of your cone distaff. Repeat the process with all four sections of the finger, laying the oblongs neatly on top of each other as you finish. To dress the distaff, place the cone at one length end and roll the cone along the oblong, making sure that the fibres along the bottom edge are firmly around the cone. The fibres at the top will make a kind of pleat. If you have a home-made cone, use a length of nylon ribbon to firmly but gently tie the flax to the cone using a ballet-sipper style criss-cross and tying off at the base of the cone. If you are using yarn cones, simply stick the second one over the top of the dressed cone. Return the cone to the distaff pole. Now, before you begin to spin, you will want something to help you spin wet. Flax, unlike wool, is best spun with the fibres wet. There are a number of ways that you can do this including drop spindling with the fibres running through your mouth as they pick up twist. This is about as pleasant as licking a Christmas's worth of stamps. You can use a bowl of water, or continually lick your own fingers, or else use a jar of flax mucilage made from pouring 500mL of boiling water over a dessertspoon of flax seeds (cheap at health food stores). Allow to sit for a few minutes, stir occasionally, the flax seed will make the water thick and gummy. You can also boil it all together for a few minutes. Strain while still warm as it will thicken more as it cools. You can use the strained seed with porridge or muesli as it is very good for you, or straight into the compost. The mucilage can be stored in small jars in the freezer until needed, although it lasts several weeks in the fridge. It feels pretty slimy, although it gives a great deal of assistance in smoothing and cohering the yarn for the beginner. If you are using a bowl of water or mucilage, place it where you can easily dip the fingers of your drafting hand into it while you spin. Flax spins best with an S spin, so make sure that your starter yarn also has an S spin. As for the actual spinning, I'm afraid we'll have to workshop this in the future as I can't really describe the techniques properly at the moment, having not had enough practice in talking about it and barely enough in doing it. Two things to note are that you should move the cone on the distaff or the distaff itself around so that you are drawing fibres down evenly as you progress, and that you can tuck the double plastic cone arrangement under one arm if you do not have a distaff at all or are drop-spindling. Diana was kind enough to give me a few spare cones if anyone is local or is travelling to Sydney in the near future you can email me to arrange pick-up should you want a set. I'm afraid postage isn't possible. |
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