As soon as you mention the word "flax" in a spinning forum, a collective cringe goes through the ranks. The fine plant fibre has a reputation for being complicated and difficult to spin. This is both true and false. With a few simple tricks, any reasonably experienced spinner can quickly produce an acceptable flax thread. However, the highest quality and fineness requires perfect material, lots of practice and good fibre preparation. I would like to introduce you to the basics of flax spinning in several parts.
The first hurdle for hand spinners is probably getting hold of good fibre material. The vast majority of fibre dealers only stock flax as carded sliver and this is not long flax but the much shorter tow. The advantage of this processing is that the spinning technique hardly differs from that of wool fibre. Unfortunately, the tow card slivers are often really waste material and come with a lot of woody residues, very short fibres and vast amounts of dust. This not only spoils the spinning experience, it also prevents really beautiful results.
It is usually rather difficult to get hold of nice long flax. In German-speaking countries, I am only aware of Egon Heger from the flax shop, who sells small quantities of beautiful hackle flax. Otherwise, the spinners can only grow their own or distribute antique hackle flax like we do in Berta's Flax Project. But even the most beautiful antique or new hackled flax needs a little care before spinning in order to produce very fine threads.
My first step when I open a flaxen plait is to shake it out thoroughly. The coarsest shives and dust fall out this way. Then I divide the plait into smaller units - so-called "handfuls".
Carding instead of hackle: long live improvisation
In the absence of original hackles in various gradations, I use my coarsest hand cards for the next step. I let the handful slide over one of my cards again and again with momentum and make sure to hold the plait firmly. Shorter and medium lengths of fibre remain in the card. Only the very long hair is kept in your hand. After two passes, the long flax should be much softer and very clean. I pull out the longest fibres from the bottom of the card and sort them separately. The very short material that remains on the card at the end is processed as a work roll.
In this way, I produce three fibre qualities: very uniform long flax, which I spin from the skirt, medium fibre length, which I also process on the skirt or from the towel, and the aforementioned Wergrรถllchen. These are also the first fibres that I work with my participants on my flax courses.
Be careful, during this work we produce an incredible amount of dust as well as great fibres. It collects on the card clothing, on your lap, on the floor and also in our lungs. That's why it makes sense to carry out these preparation steps outdoors or with very good ventilation.
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