Guest Author - Llyn Payne
Flax is a cellulose fiber produced by the flax plant and is further classified as a bast fiber because the fibers are produced within the stem of the plant.
Preparing flax fibers for spinning is quite labor intensive. First, the flax must be harvested by pulling it from the ground, not by cutting it. Flax bundles that have been harvested are kept in the exact same order as they were pulled all the way through processing.
The first step in processing flax is Rippling. For this, the dried flax is pulled through a coarse comb to remove the seeds. Next comes retting which is, literally, rotting. The flax bundles are tied together and placed either on the grass (dew retting) or in water (pond or stream retting) until the outer layer of straw has been rotted away, exposing the bast fibers within the stem. After retting comes grassing which is simply laying the fibers out until there is a color change, after which it is stacked to dry.
Scrutching is the next step. The flax fibers are beaten against a board with a paddle to remove any remaining straw and the inner core of the plant left after retting. The final step is hackling in which the fibers are pulled through several comb like devices, which separates the long fibers from the shorter ones.
At this point, the flax has been separated into 2 types of fibers. The best fibers are the long line fibers and they are put up in a preparation called a strick. The stick is composed of that one handful of plant that was harvested from the field in one clump. The shorter fibers that were hackled out of the strick are the tow.
Today, tow flax is usually available to hand spinners in either bleached or unbleached which is carded into roving as sold as Flax Top.
When the flax was hackled all of the short fibers were removed, which means that there is a wide range of fiber lengths in the tow. This makes the carded preparations quite hairy and a bit difficult to spin.
To make spinning easier, the first thing to do with carded flax top is to reprocess it. Grasp the roving with both hands and tug. Watch to see where it wants to separate. This may be 10 to 12 inches more or less from the end of the roving. Tear a piece off. Now you have an idea of the length of the longest staple fibers in that roving. Now, comb the shorter fibers out of that piece – just draw the fibers through the tines of a comb, one end first, then turn the piece over and comb the other end. A mini-wool comb works well for this, a pet comb or even a hair comb would work also. What you are doing is hackling the flax. Repeat this for the entire roving. Notice how much less hairy the longer fibers are? Set the long fibers aside for spinning and keep the shorter fibers for blending.
Once your tow fibers are prepared, you can spin the either wet or dry. To wet spin them, keep a little cup of water or a damp sponge handy and just moisten the fingers on your forward hand as needed. A lot of moisture isn’t necessary, it only take a little to activate the pectin in the flax so that it forms a sort of glue which strengthens the fibers and also helps keep any remaining hairiness under control. Dry spinning requires no special equipment. Either way, a worsted spinning technique is the best choice for spinning the longer tow fibers.
