Field of flax in full bloom

A field of flax in full bloom is a lovely thing. Years ago we had a summer place outside of Lipton, Saskatchewan.  One day when we were driving around exploring the countryside, we came around a corner and saw a lake shimmering in the distance. As we got closer to the lake we realized it wasn't water at all, but a field of flax in full bloom.  The blue flowers and the gentle way the plants were swaying in the wind looked like water and waves.  We didn't have time to be disappointed that it wasn't a lake -- as we were so thrilled by the beauty of flax field.

While my wee field of flax is nothing in comparison to those 50+ acre parcels in Saskatchewan, it is still a thing of beauty.  Since the flooding wiped out a lot of our crops, this is the prettiest thing in our garden these days.

So what's the plan for this field of flax?  About 30 days after the flowering is over, the flax is ready to be harvested.  Then the work begins.  I pull the plants up, roots and all.  If I want to save the seed -- for next year's planting (?) I have to dry the plants out.  If I decide not to save the seed, then I can move to the retting process right away. Retting is the process of rotting the outer layers of the stalks that are holding the linen fibres to the  woody core.  This is the first step in extracting the linen fibre. You can do this by leaving the flax outside on the ground and let the morning dew do it.  You can also do it by leaving the flax in standing water for a while. According to "Linen in the Middle Ages -- A Guide to Growing and Processing" by the Baroness Eleanora van den Bogaerde, water retting is faster and leaves the flax a whiter colour than dew retting does.  The challenge is having something large enough.  With my wee field, I don't think this is a problem.  Maybe in the future it will be, but for now, I think I can manage with a huge rubbermaid bin.  After it's retted, there are three more steps before I have fibre for spinning.

One step at time.  Right now I am growing the stuff and admiring its beauty.

Status update on my 100-mile skirt

It's a hot day here in Glen Valley, threatening to go up to 32 degrees by mid-afternoon.  So I thought I'd catch some time indoors next to the fan and do an update on the 100-mile skirt.

A while back I combed a bundle of the grey alpaca and divided what I had done into two batches.  I've spun most of that onto two bobbins -- very fine with a light twist. Even though this spinning has produced a lot of yardage, I may need more.  So I asked my friend if she would return the bag of grey alpaca I gave her.  It is so nice to have understanding friends.

I have next to spin an equal amount of the blue fibre -- totally amazing stuff from Sweet Georgia Yarns fibre club.  Titled "Placid Waters" it is 50% merino, 25%  bamboo and 25% tussah silk.  It has a wonderful sheen and subtle gradations of blues.  As with the grey alpaca, I underestimated how much I would need, so again in a mild panic and relying on the kindness of friends, I asked another dear friend if I could have her braid of "plaid waters".  She willingly gave up her braid and for that I am very thankful.

Now I have no excuse to procrastinate.  I have more than enough fibre to do the job and a good chunk of time on my hands.  My problem is my own attention span.  I like starting projects and trying new things.  The part where you have to finish is the part that takes a lot of discipline.  Right now, this project is in the spinning marathon phase.  Just sit and spin.  And spin.  And then ply, and ply.  And so forth until I have what I figure is enough to get the job done and the skirt made.

Then it's a knitting triathlon as there are different aspects to the skirt. That I can manage, what with my transit assisted commute to the city.  I'm aiming to wear this skirt by Thanksgiving.  See if I'm right.

Yarn for a new project

At the Aldergrove Fair a couple of weekends ago, a young gal asked me to make her a special pair of mitts.  She liked the half-mitt style in hand spun yarn -- but for this pair, she wanted them to come up to her elbow.  So after a few minutes of finding out what fibres and colours she likes, I agreed to make her a pair.

I've got the pattern designed -- it's a variation on the Baby Fan Lace mitts, starting with more stitches and decreasing as you get to the wrist.  And now I am working on the yarn.  She liked the idea of blending alpaca and wool and adding just a wee bit of silk for some luster.  So I set out to do that. Here's a sample of the blended fibres and knit pattern. The first half (on the left) is the one I settled for, the yarn on the right is wool blended with cinnamon alpaca and silk.

Here's what it was made out of: beige/cream alpaca, polworth (wool) and some tussah silk.  Blending fibres can take a long time on the drum carder so I decided to use the picker to do the blending.

A picker is a piece of machinery that helps you open the fibres and get them ready for carding or even spinning.  It's also a great tool for blending fibres so they are mostly mixed before you put them through your drum carder. My girlfriend, from the dyeing days, owns a Patrick Green picker and she kindly let me borrow it for a spell.  Here it is.

It has some pretty sharp teeth, so there's no sipping wine while you do this.  You have to pay attention on every single swing.  The fibre is fed into the front and on each swing, the teeth grab the fibre, drag it across all the other teeth, and spit it out the back.  All loose and opened up.

Then I took this wool/alpaca blend, added silk and put it through the drum carder.  The results weren't what I was hoping for -- too many noils.  I'll post some photos of the sample yarn, when I have the issue sorted.

A Good Day to Dye

A couple of weeks ago I hosted a "good day to dye" event at my place.  I pulled all my dyes out of the cupboards and shed, dug up skeins of handspun yarn and all kinds of fibre and called my girlfriend.  She signed on and brought bags of loose fibre, rovings and skeins of yarn.  We had more than enough to play with.  The weather was perfect for this, sunny skies and the bugs stayed away for the most part.

Here is a photo essay of our day.

This is the dyeing studio a.k.a my back porch.

We threw some loose fibre into dye pots and we also painted skeins of yarn and then steamed them.  The skein being dyed here is from the fibre cleaned in my rain barrel experiments.

Here's my friend painting a merino roving.  After the painting, it got rolled up in cellophane, left to sit for a spell and them put into the steamer.

One view of the drying rack with all the finished projects.

Next day view of the drying rack.  When the rovings were fully dried, I opened then up and am very happy to announce there was no felting at all!

From left to right:
Blue and pink shiny fibre is caesin -- the silky fibre from milk proteins; grey/blue roving -- straight up corriedale from Humming Bee Farm; pink/orange roving -- merino/silk blend; grey/pink skein -- cheviot two-ply; yellow/blue skein -- polwarth two-ply spindle spun; blue/purple skein -- hodge-podge of singles hanging about the studio that got spun into two decent sized skeins.  Variety of fibres. This may be hard to believe and you may think I am making this up, but I actually have plans for every bit of fibre here and each skein of yarn. Stay tuned so I can prove to you it's true.

Field of Flax progress

Hubby texted me this morning and told me my flax is blooming.  Can't wait to get home and take photos of it.  This photo was taken yesterday morning.

Moving Garlic or Life on the Flood Plain

What you are looking at is my garden. It sits on the south west corner of the property.  This photo was taken on the morning of June 24th.  The Fraser River was rising -- had in fact been steadily rising for a week, and now was reaching the point where it was causing some serious inconvenience to us.  For as I stated earlier, this is my garden.

This is our garlic.  The wee piece to left of this photo is my flax, but that will come in another post.  This is garlic in full regalia, which now that the days are getting shorter (imagine that, we haven't even had summer yet!) it is focused on putting all its energy into making bulbs.  I don`t need to tell you that garlic doesn`t like to sit in water.  For any amount of time.

So in the midst of flood preparations and our own preparations to head out of town for a week, we decided we need to move the garlic to higher ground.

Fortunately we had a bed prepared -- ready for the annual planting of basil -- but it was there, it was dry and so, in went the garlic.

Here it is, newly planted.  Not sure if this was the right thing to do.  But we figured it could die here (maybe) or die in the standing water (for sure).

Will let you know how it turns out.

My field of flax

In this blog I have focused on locally sourced wool, alpaca, llama and mohair.  But there are also some other fibres that we can obtain locally, and that I can even manage to grow/harvest myself.  At least I think so.  These are the bast fibres -- the fibres that come from plants.

So, last weekend I planted a 13' x 3' bed of flax.  Flax is the bast fibre used to make the yarn and therefore fabric we call linen.  Here it is.

Two nights later the scraggly feral cat that's been visiting lately, used a piece of my newly planted flax bed as a litter box right before he jumped onto my porch and sprayed the wall with his inspiring scent.  I am not amused.  I covered my flax bed with scrap pieces of wire fencing and a white sheet.

Today the rain continued so it's safe to uncover.  My lovely flax is up!  Already!

My plan is to grow, harvest and then go through all the processes needed to make spin-able fibre.  If I have enough for a washcloth I'll be lucky. It's quite a process from plant to spin-able fibre, having a lot of steps and requiring medieval looking equipment.  But I have faith I can figure it all out.  I mentioned this wee project of mine at our executive guild meeting, and the gals were quite enthusiastic about it.  So I'm not alone in this learning process and finding the tools needed to do the job.

On my run this morning I noticed a good amount of stinging nettle along the side of the road.  That was the bast fibre used in the Hans Christian Andersen story of The Wild Swans.  Tomorrow if it ever stops with the torrential rain I am going to find my work gloves and get on my bike and cut down as much nettle as I can manage.  I'll use the nettle to learn about the retting process and other elements of turning bast fibres into something that you can spin, cause those are fibres that are ready right now. 

We'll see.