Spinning Flax Fibre Into Linen

[Music] hello I'm Christine McLoud I'm a weaver at Weaver's Cottage in Karin a National Trust for Scotland [Music] property what I'm doing now is I'm spinning flax and I'm going to tell you a wee bit about the spinning of flax and how it differs from spinning of wool what I've got here is a flax spinning wheel now the main difference between a wool wheel and a flax wheel is it has this addition here which is called a distaff and the distaff is on my left what I'm doing is I'm spinning the flax the actual spinning is very similar to the film on spinning with wool main difference is again you're spinning in the opposite direction to R now what I have to do before I begin is to wet my hands and it's really best to have a cup of water some people have little cups that they hang from the spinning wheel but just cup of water that you can keep your hands wet as you work now the reason for that is that the fiber contains a sort of gummy substance and that by wetting it slightly it makes it smoother and stronger when you're spinning keep your right hand on the yarn and pull gently with the fibers now good good flax should have a long fiber and with your left hand you're basically keeping the rest of the fibers place and through a bit of practice get to be able to spin a very fine yarn of thread indeed now it's at this point that we could maybe look at the fiber itself but you're looking at a strick of flax a strick of flax and now it's linen yarn so that's where the flax turns into linen and that's how to spin flax [Music]

Channel: Scribble

Views: 71,908

Keywords: videojug, video, jug, howto, how, to, tips, advice, tricks, instructions, tutorials, videos, step, by, guide, tutorial, union, jack, nails, british, flag, nail, art, great, britain, patriotic

Id: Az2VNllZhEE

Length: 2min 56sec (176 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 08 2012