We all know about linen, what it is and where it comes from, don’t we? Apparently not. I was giving a tour of the mill today and showed a picture of flax plants growing in a field, blue flowers and all. One lady was astonished as she thought it was a synthetic fabric. Fair enough, there are lots of things I don’t know and don’t bother to find out about unless I’m interested. I just love to talk about linen, there’s just so much to it! Like all the processes it goes through before it’s even spun into yarn, and these processes involve some wonderful words like stooks, retting, scutching, and hackling, and many more. I sew with linen a lot and decided to have a go at using a spindle to make my own yarn which I could then weave into cloth. I got this gorgeous spindle (though I believe it’s easy enough to make one yourself) and a bag of flax. Dozens of Youtube videos later I was ready to get stuck in, but of course, things are never as easy as they look. And it takes such a long time to spin such a short piece of yarn, which is all lumpy, knobbly and uneven. But it looks good on the spindle. So it’s positioned on the shelf at the ready, like the vacuum cleaner sitting in the hall, it shows intent!
Rosie Moore Textiles 