Spin With Me: Flax to Linen

hi guys with it being summer i thought maybe now would be a good time to look into spinning some summer like fibers like flax which becomes linen once you spin it so it's flax until it's spun and then it's linen so i have two pounds of this because i wanted to spin some to weave with now this is commercially prepared so it would be not lime flax but the other kind is it toe anyways i have spun some linen in the past but it's definitely been too thick so i would like to work on getting a thinner spin so let's have a look at the flax as you can see it's a very stiff fiber and it's very grippy very grippy so i am going to grab a sample of lynn and i have spun before so we will have something to compare it to and then we are going to start spinning this oh and i will need my water i wet spin my flax into linen so i will need to get my water source with my sponge i will be right back all right here is the first linen that i spun as you can see it's very stiff and dusty i have to wash it yet well boil it and this is as thin as i got which is not bad it's a singles but i want to get thinner than that so this is my goal is to get thinner than this put that aside so tools we need and towel just gonna throw that over my lap and this is my water source this is just the lid of a glass candle and this hold on try and get a hold of it this is just a makeup sponge um it's got different colors in it because there's water in it so i just wet the sponge and pop it in here and that holds a lot of water this will keep me spinning for a while because you don't need a lot you just need enough to dampen your fingers but you also don't want any water in your fiber you're drafting or it won't draft so that's why we have the towel keep our hands dry all right so we will reposition the camera and we're going to spin some lemon so we have our two pound bag of fiber here i'm just going to grab a chunk pull it off now i've seen recommendations to spin from the fold so what i'm going to do is i'm going to fluff it up a bit um you can dress as a disc staff with this as well although usually that's reserved for i think it's called line flax the really long long fibers they'd be the premium ones these are the shorter bits as you can see so i'm just going to fluff it a little bit here and i'm going to fold it over for spinning from the fold all right let's get started i think we're going to need a loop to spin with this because it doesn't have the scales that wool has it's not grippy so trying to get it to stick to your leader might not work you might need to have a loop so i'm going to make a loop get that going again grab a couple of little fibers pull them through there we go all right so i'm gonna move my water over to this knee so i'm gonna keep my wet sponge right here i'm just gonna wet my fingers oops going the wrong way and just run them over that so draft out your fibers and then run your wet fingers down but you want to make sure you don't wet them until you're done with your draft because that will glue your fibers together i feel like this is just going to fly apart apparently it doesn't need that much twist actually it's really good i need to wet my fingers again now this i'm finding a little intimidating because it doesn't have that grip of wool you can't actually feel it i think you can with wool how you can almost feel it when the twist is good it's not the same for linen but i am getting a very fine spin working from the fold on this okay my fingers are dry again so i'm just going to pinch that there so the twist doesn't get into the fiber supply run my fingers over that and go again i can actually almost count the number of fibers that are going into the draft on this oh there we go drifted apart i'm so used to spitting wool that has that grip that'll kind of pull it in and together and that doesn't seem to happen with the flaps you have to literally put the twist in it's not going to work its way in at least that's what it seems so far i haven't spun this fine because i've always fought with flax so all right let's see how we would join i'm just going to lay fibers side by side and then i'm going to wet that and then draft yeah i don't think you could spin this with a woolen draw definitely a worsted drawing method okay my fingers again i'm not using a whole lot of water my fingers are just kind of damp but it just sort of seems to glue the fiber together which i'm pretty sure is how it happens there's like some kind of pectin or something in the plant fiber that acts as glue i also don't want to apply this i want to use it as singles and i want to use it as singles for warp and weft so this could be tricky and it's definitely going to be a project i have two pounds of it to do but if i can get it nice and fine i might be able to make some really nice hand spun linen cloth which i think would be really cool goals so you can see i'm drafting out spin and wet at the same time and that seems to be working so drop it till you see the number of fibers you want and slide your wet fingers down it to sort of lock it into place and that seems to be working for getting a fairly fine thread out of this i don't want to be too fine but i do want to go finer than i was before grab that and oh this could get tricky all right let's fluff this up lay it alongside that fiber i'm gonna get some water and use that to glue it together oh it works guys did you see how that was done let's try it again we're gonna deliberately pull it apart okay we're gonna fluff and fluff and lay them side by each oh there's a ottawa valley saying for you side by each and then run our wet fingers over it like glue well look at that i just figured out how to join pretty seems to be a pretty solid joint there's always learning to do and if you experiment you might find a new method of doing things now i'm not sure the diameter of the ideal linen thread i'm just kind of going for a nice thin single i have a very low uptake right now i'm using my regular flyer with the center whirl so it's i would say medium twist it's not high it's not low so we'll say medium that would make sense and i'm just kind of pulling out how many fibers i want and then running my wet fingers over them all right so my fiber supply has gotten a little mushed here so i'm gonna put that there make sure my hand is dry before i touch this because i don't want to cement it all together see if we can pull this in half again we can look at that all right and then we'll fold it to spin from the fold now seems our magic connecting twist should be pull out a few fibers lay them over our spun yarn with the fingers now i'm moving upwards to smooth out those new fibers onto the shaft of the spun yarn then i'm going to let the twist into that and let's see it works all right i really like that that works really well now in the drafting it doesn't seem to really want to pull those fibers out i'm really having to work to pull the fibers out of the fiber supply probably harder than i should have to so let's try loosening up on my fiber supply no it just doesn't want to come out of it all right i want to try spinning from the end again so i'm just going to take just a teeny little bit and we're going to just pre-draft just a little bit just to make sure those fibers are sliding because i'm telling you this stuff just is so grippy all right there's a little clump i want to draft all right so grab our end here and we'll get down to where we want to join and lay the fibers together get a little bit of water and can you see how there's the spun yarn hold on and there's the pieces that we want to join so i'm just laying it over running some water over it and then and start spinning and it held that's cool all right okay i think i like spinning from the end better just grab a little tiny little bit of fiber to do this no oh it almost got away from me so to join on we lay a few threads over so i have the thread and the fiber i want to add and then i'm going to take my wet fingers run it up oh that didn't work that time run it up and add some twist oh yeah it joins way way different than wool way different but it works okay i need to wet my fingers again oh oh something snapped oh i must have had tooth and a spot and put too high a twist all right lay the fibers i want to join together from a bit and wet it i'm just kind of twisting them together with my wet fingers and i'll add some twist and it held my wet fingers into the fiber supply and it stopped drafting got to make sure you're just grabbing the very very tips of that otherwise you're going to glue all your fibers together and you won't be able to spin thin this is me learning too i haven't done much flaxspin and i'll tell you that but i do really want to learn because i mean nothing would make me happier than to weave a really fine linen cloth not for any particular purpose other than to say i did it and this isn't going to be really fine but i will settle for sort of fine all right so this is actually going pretty smooth i probably just jinxed myself by saying that but i think what i'll do is i'll throw on a podcast and i'm gonna work at spinning linen for a while so i've been spinning for about a half an hour now and maybe a little longer and i've been playing with what i'm doing trying to make it easier so i'm taking a chunk of this top or roving and i'm just drafting it just a little bit just to kind of break up that bond that's in there and make it a little less sticky you want to be very careful go slowly because there's so many different lengths in there it'll just suddenly pull apart on you so i'm just gonna drop down a bit okay so once i have it drafted a bit and throw it in my lap now i'm really glad i have this towel because it is it sheds like a dog it's crazy now i've also found that um wet spinning is to kind of control the fuzzies and the halo but i've found that i'm just actually not getting that much of a fuzz to it so what i have changed to doing is i'm only wetting my fingers to do joints and this is how i normally spin i sit back wait for my wheel and i watch tv and i spin all right so all the moisture now has gone from my fingers and i am just dry spinning this flax because i'm doing a worsted i'm smoothing the fibers as i go i'm finding it's going a lot quicker and easier to dry spin it than to wet spin and since i'm going to boil it afterwards i'm kind of thinking it's all going to come out in the wash quite literally so now i am finding the process actually kind of soothing and relaxing i'm just plunked back in my chair comfy traveling away drafting easy and i can even watch tv while doing this i'm using a fairly short forward draw and i keep forgetting to let a lot of the keep a lot of the fiber ahead okay so i need to do a joint i just lay it over wet my fingers grab a few chips and then just rub that moisture over it see if you get too much the twist is going to go into the fiber here so i will unspin it and draft so because i'm spinning clockwise or z if it gets too bound up i just twist backwards or s and draft and that can unclump it and unstick it for you and then you can just go right back to a nice easy comfortable short forward worsted bra and i am spinning linen flats on this side land on this side it makes no sense to me that flax once you add twist becomes linen it should still be flex it's the same darn thing it's just fun but you know english is a funny language so i will just roll with it and i'm going to keep working my way through this two pound bag of flax making myself some linen to weave with so that is what i have learned about spitting flax let's do a comparison and see just before i go how if i'm getting it any finer than i did the first time i spun it which was probably a year or more ago i don't really remember so it does look like i am getting it much finer oh yeah definitely finer and as i get more experience with it and stop being afraid of it drafting apart as i am right now i can probably get that even finer still time i get to the end of this two pounds i'll be finer still and as long as i can keep my skeins i can each skein is fairly consistent across it i can work with different thicknesses and different weights that's not a problem for me so that's my foray into spinning linen hopefully there was some information there that's good for you um i will come back when it's time to process the linen and i will do another video then of how we're going to process it so until then thanks so much for joining me oh do you like my haircut i cut it myself because i'm not going to be able to get to a hairdresser until july and i have curly hair so if i muck it up it's not going to show as badly except for right here where i shave my softball but it'll grow back it's no big deal so thanks for joining me guys and i'll see you next time bye

Channel: BF Fiber Arts

Views: 5,587

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Id: NgrPkNOobWo

Length: 21min 27sec (1287 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 16 2021