For the love of spinning
Last weekend offered the perfect weather to process my flax. I had water retted it in a kiddy pool like I did last year and it had dried, got rained on and dried again a few times. Throug all my 11 years of growing an experimental flax patch I realize I have underretted it. It …
When I talk to people about my experimental flax patch I often get the question of yield – how much flax do I get per square meter of harvest? I have never been able to answer the question since I haven’t documented the numbers. But this year I tried to estimate a flax yield. It …
I have grown an experimental flax patch in my community garden allotment every year since 2014. This year I have spun my flax patch yarn for the first time. I always felt I needed to deserve to spin my own flax, to be procifient enough to spin it. There was so little of it and …
It’s been a while, but today I release a new video! This time I show you how I rehackle flax that has been stored for a while. In this case flax from the Berta’s flax project that has been stored since the 1940’s, but I would rehackle any flax that doesn’t come fresh off the …
This week I finished the retting of my 2022 flax. I decided to pay extra attention to the retting process this year. The aim of my experimental flax patch has always been to learn, and I keep learning every year. Walk with me through this year’s days of flax retting. The 2021 flax harvest was …
I have grown flax in an experimental flax patch since 2014. The aim has always been to learn, from sowing, growing and harvesting to processing. And I have learned a lot through the years. This week I finished the flax harvest 2022. The flax patch is an ongoing classroom for me. I learn and relearn …
This week I have worked multidimensionally with flax. I have spun Austrian flax harvested and processed before 1900, knit my handspun yarn from 80 year old Austrian flax, hackled my own flax from 2020 och 2021 and monitored my 2022 flax. Have a peak in my current flax brain! When I teach spinning (wool) I …
There are many versions of the story of Sleeping Beauty. The brothers Grimm’s may be the most widespread one while the romanticized Disney animation may be the most known today. Recently I found a new version, though, and I’d like to share it with you. If you aren’t familiar with the Berta’s flax project, started …
Last summer I mustered up the courage to spin flax. I had got some very long 80 year old Swedish flax from a relative of a relative. To manage it more easily I rehackled it, and spun it whenever I could spin outdoors. This year I am rehackling again – with 80 year Austrian flax …
Many of you may have heard of the project Berta’s flax, initiated by Austrian fiber artist Christiane Seufferlein. She got a chest full of hackled flax that came from relatives to Berta. She married in the 1950’s and, like most women at the time, she brought a chest of flax into her marriage. Today is …