Flax spiders - Tow

Tow refers to the shortest fibres of a flax plait, usually mixed with lots of shives and dust. There are traditionally many different ways of spinning the tow, but I find the roll type super practical because it doesn't require any special equipment and is familiar to most hand spinners from the wool.

Anyone who spins natural wool is familiar with the problem of vegetable litter in the fleece. If you are bothered by the small particles in the wool, you should be very strong now, because traditionally nothing was sorted out of the tow. It was spun with straw, dust and sometimes veritable pieces of wood. After all, it was the most important basic material for all tarpaulins and ropes on the farm. It had to be processed quickly and provide many, many metres of coarse canvas.

The rolls can be more compact or looser depending on how precisely you have pulled longer fibres out of the card during preparation. Many long fibres hold the roll together well. If this is the case, I carefully pull on the ends to loosen the fibres. Then the tow is ready to spin. As already mentioned, tow was never spun for "beauty", not even for fineness. The aim was to produce good weft threads for coarse fabric and therefore it was traditionally not made damp during spinning, as is the case with long flax. If you only have tow available and still want beautiful yarn, you should definitely spin it wet. This way, the fibres stick together and produce a less fluffy and smoother yarn.

In my opinion, tow needs a little more twist than comparable animal fibres in terms of length. Flax absorbs an enormous amount of energy. In addition, tow is often twisted afterwards, which is another reason why MORE twist is not a bad thing. Now prepare a small bowl of water or a damp sponge and place it within easy reach of your spinning wheel Moisture should always run into the thread WITH the twist. If the yarn is already spun, moistening it won't help as much; if the unspun fibre supply is moistened, it can no longer be pulled out. Therefore, wet the fingers of the spinning hand, pull out and move along the emerging yarn with the twist. In this way, the moisture goes exactly where it belongs. Never use water sparingly, the yarn may well be WET. It is only important that it never remains on the bobbin for too long, but is reeled off to dry. If you like it clean, you can also pluck out shives from the tow during the spinning process. Although this is tedious, it can result in a very nice tow yarn that is certainly used for more applications than for coarse tarpaulins.