Flax to Twine

 

It is time to describe my journey growing my own garden twine. Yep, you heard me right. I grew my own flax (Linum usitatissimum) and processed it all the way through to the final twine. 

 

My other half was horrified by the time consuming nature of it all. For me, that was the point. I wanted to fully appreciate what truly goes into producing a piece of humble twine, something so easy to take for granted.

This journey involved growing the flax, harvesting it, drying it, retting it, drying it again, scutching it, hackling it, crudely hand 'spinning' it, and finally waxing the final pieces of twine.

Now, you are probably wondering what all that means. Scutching? What is that all about? Rather than reiterating what others have already described so eloquently, I'll direct you to them instead here. Don't pay attention to what they are trying to sell you, just focus on the fabulous historic photos and little film. They are great.

Now I'll give you a flavour of my own experience. Unfortunately, I was not particularly on-the-ball with chronicling everything along the way so, I'll share with you what I can.

Growing

I planted up a little patch in the allotment. I interplanted it. You can see the rows of flax nestled between rows of wheat and broad beans. I'll be honest. This interplanting did not go well, because the crops did not ripen at the same time. Separating them is a task I wish never to repeat. I hope I can catch a snap of the blue flowers this summer, such a silly oversight forgetting to do so last year.

Harvesting

You can see the flax with it's little round seed heads intermingled amongst the ears of not quite ripe wheat. Interesting, so as not to damage the flax fibres during harvesting, the plants are pulled out roots and all. See what I mean about the difficulty I had harvesting the flax without disturbing the wheat? Nightmare!

Corn dollies 

Corn dollies? This is just a little fun asside. They are a traditional craft in Europe. You can make these from flax as well as wheat. I made the corn dollies in the photo on a little course in Plymouth. This workshop is what sparked my initial interest in growing my own flax. Its amazing how one thing leads to another.

Retting

I don't have a photo of this. To be honest though, it wasn't visually interesting. I just submerged the flax in a bucket of water over winter for a couple months. The descriptions are right about the water getting smelly after a while! Seriously, like sewage. 

How did I know when this retting process was complete? I didn't. I just couldn't stand the smell any longer. Hahah!

Scutching

The retting definitely worked because, once dry, the flax was surprisingly easy to scutch. Nothing fancy here. I simply took a few stems and worked along them with my hands bending back and forth as I went. The sheaths just shattered away sprinkling to the ground. Quite satisfying.

Hackling

Magically, I discovered the perfect tool for this, a cheap dog grooming comb. The little video explains the process far better than words. You can see the final result is beautiful long strands of fibre. They feel like hair from a fine horse's tail.

Spinning

I describe this step as 'spinning' in quotes because, I again possessed no proper tools for this. I just devised a technique using my fingers and teeth... I'll let the video speak for itself on this one.

Waxing

As a little final finishing touch, just because I could, I waxed the pieces of twine with a ball of beeswax I had lying around. I just rubbed the wax along the length of the twine warming it slightly in my hands to really coat the fibres.

Voila! Garden twine to tie up my tomato plants. A year in the making.