The Intentional Spinner

introduction

AS A YOUNG WOMAN, I raised my children on a little island off the west coast of Canada. It was an idyllic life. We lived on the edge of the beach in a little cottage covered—and probably held upright—by roses. I could watch otters and orcas from my studio windows while I spun and wove.

Before my children and I came, the people who lived on this land immigrated from England, traveling round the Horn in a sailing ship. They braved the roughest water on earth, hoping to find a new life in a new world. They brought with them their linens, china, carriage horses—all the accoutrements of a civilized life in the 1800s. They brought apple-tree cuttings kept alive on the voyage stuck in raw potatoes, lavender and poppy seeds, rhubarb and roses, all a wild tangled garden when I arrived with my cat, a loom, a spinning wheel, and my two small children.

But long before the first European settlers, other people lived here who had also made a perilous journey to find a new home. They traveled across the open grasslands between Russia and Alaska and down the rim of glacier-free land along the seacoast to where my cottage sat. Over thousands of years, they created a midden that eventually formed the foundation for my home. They carved stone vessels and pestles, made magical petroglyphs. Because textiles leave no surviving shards, we can’t know the full extent of their textile use, but we do know from their tools and textile artifacts that they spun and wove.

On my little island, across from the stone church on the road to the ferry landing, a rock ledge slopes down toward the sea. Just below the high-tide line is a perfect round pool about 15 feet across, carved in stone by thousands of years of retting nettle. Along with the towering cedar trees that once swept the shoreline, nettle was a main fiber staple of the area. In the rich soil and gentle climate of the Pacific Northwest, nettles are still abundant and often grow several feet taller than my head.

Nettles were collected in early fall and dried over the winter. In the warm late spring and summer, rain filled the depression in the rock and was heated by the sun. Bundles of dried nettle would be laid in the warm rainwater. Sitting across from one another around the pool, women held a long cedar plank that was flat on the top and curved on the bottom. They pounded the nettle stalks to release the strong bast fibers between the outer coating of vegetable material and the pithy inner core.

After washing the loosened materials away in the salty water of the tide, they stretched the nettle fibers to dry on the thorny dog-rose bushes. Day after day, they pounded and rinsed and dried, until only the long, silky nettle fibers were left. Gradually, the natural depression was enlarged and shaped by the motion of the cedar boards. Thousands of years of pounding nettle carved this perfect stone bowl on the edge of the sea.

Nettle was the fabric of their life. Spun into a firm two-ply by thigh-spinning or spindle-spinning, nettle was used to make incredibly durable fishnets, traps, and weirs to harvest the fish that formed the main staple of their diet. Baskets of cedar, cherry bark, and nettle were used for food collection and storage. Because the steadily wet climate along the Pacific Coast made the use of animal skins impractical, these fibers also formed the basis of their clothing. Early people on the West Coast created capes, wraps, and hats from the fibers around them.

I learned about spinning nettle long before I found the stone pool on my island, even before I learned to spin, from one of the wonderful stories my grandmother told. It was a magical tale about a young woman’s quest to rescue her seven brothers, who had been turned into swans by their evil stepmother. To rescue them, the young woman had to collect nettle, spin it into yarn, and knit seven shirts out of the nettle yarn—all the while remaining mute.

Many adventures later, her muteness (and perhaps her knitting) caused her to be tied to a stake on the village green to be burned as a witch. But she continued to knit. Seven swans flew over the village on their spring return to the north and circled her. She threw the shirts up to them, and they turned back into handsome young princes and saved the day. They lived happily ever after, even the youngest prince, who had feathers instead of fingers on his left hand. His sister didn’t have quite enough nettle yarn to finish the sleeve of his sweater!

Apart from fairy tales, nettle was an important fiber for early European cultures. Using methods similar to those from the Pacific Northwest, nettle was harvested and spun to make strong, long-wearing yarns. In many European cultures, nettle fiber was considered to be stronger than flax. It was used for many of the fabrics that flax is now used for (clothing, sailcloth, ropes, household linens), but most often for making fishnets; in fact, the word net is derived from nettle. Nor does the story of nettle end in Northern Europe. Years ago, I found an ancient Chinese tapestry that shows dragons coming out of the sea and flying through clouds. Each dragon is ornately woven from a textured nettle thread. China and India have a long history of nettle textiles, and I have recently seen elegant nettle fabrics from Nepal.

The nettle story forms a circle of sorts, the type of circle that has always seemed to me full of mystery and wisdom. The paths of plants, animals, and humans crisscross the planet, intersecting and interconnecting, creating a beautiful and intricate pattern. It reminds me that we are infinitely more similar to one another than we are different.

In the creation myths from many cultures, a spinner is a symbol of creation and change. And here, in the modern world, a love of textiles forms a web that connects us beyond the limitations of gender, race, and belief systems.

The history of fibers and spinning is the history of the world; handspinners have a lineage that stretches back through time, linking us to thousands of years of spinning technology and knowledge. The forces at work in the world and in your fibers are constant and steadfast, shaping your hands and your work as they have always.

Judith MacKenzie McCuin

Photo by Dave White

Photo by Flax Council of Canada and Flax Canada 2015

Photo by Martin Firus

Photo by Ann Swanson

Photo by Daniel Mar

the nature of fibers

PLINY, THE FIRST-CENTURY ROMAN traveler, naturalist, and textile aficionado, said that there were four important fibers in the ancient world, two animal and two vegetable. He referred to wool and silk, cotton and flax. A few fibers have been added since Pliny’s time—like Angora rabbit, bison, and manufactured fibers—and others have been largely lost, including cedar bark, mountain goat, kudzu, and wisteria. Nevertheless, some two thousand years later, Pliny is still basically correct; wool, silk, cotton, and flax are still the basis of most of the world’s textiles.

Fibers can be divided into three main groups: cellulose-based, protein-based, and manufactured (fibers made in a laboratory). Chapters 1 and 2 explore the properties of cellulose and protein fibers, essential for thousands of years. Chapter 3 discusses manufactured fibers with a longer history than you might expect. Chapter 4 examines fiber from a scientific perspective, exploring why fibers behave as they do.

[CHAPTER ONE]

cellulose

Cellulose is the primary building block of all green plants, forming the structure of the plants’ cell walls. Cellulose has many uses in the modern world. It is the major component of cotton, linen, and ramie textiles, and also of paper and cardboard products. Cellulose is used in making detergents and shampoos because it attracts and surrounds dirt, making it easy to rinse away. When converted to a liquid by treating it with a variety of chemicals, cellulose can be extruded into a clear cellophane or a variety of rayon fibers. In the world of handspinning, cellulose fibers come from three sources: bast fibers, seed-hair fibers, and regenerated fibers from a variety of sources. (For in-depth information about regenerated cellulosics, see Chapter 3.)

Bast: The First Fibers

NETTLE, FLAX, HEMP, AND RAMIE

Photo by Geof Kime, Stemergy.com

These bast fibers (from a hemp plant) are loosening from the pithy core.

Bast fibers are the skeletal parts of plants that hold the plant upright and in some cases give structure to the leaves. These fibers are found sandwiched between the outer bark or vegetable covering on stems and leaves and the plant’s pithy core. Think of a stalk of celery: when you break a stalk, the stringy bits are the bast fibers. Each individual fiber is actually a bundle of finer fibers glued together with pectin and coated with a varnishlike substance. When the varnish is removed and the pectin dissolved, finer bundles are released. Like Russian dolls, each opening up to reveal a smaller one, bast fibers can contain hundreds of fine bundles, each containing hundreds of even finer fibers.

Flax, hemp, and ramie are well-known prehistoric bast fibers that the textile industry, handspinners, and weavers still use extensively. Because it is difficult to cultivate, nettle isn’t used industrially, although indigenous spinners and weavers still use it in Nepal, Tibet, and India.

PROCESSING BAST FIBERS

Bast plants are collected just before the seeds have totally ripened. At this time, the cellulose fibers will have developed enough strength to prevent the stem from breaking easily when bent. (If the seeds are allowed to ripen, the oil will be drawn out of the fiber, and the stem will start to weaken.) The entire plant is pulled out of the soil by hand, taking care to keep the root intact. The plants are hung by the root to dry. Doing so lets the seeds finish ripening and the oils of the plant, which are largely in the root, disperse throughout the stem, keeping the fibers pliable and strong.

Next, the seeds are removed by rippling. With the stalks held by the root end, the blossom ends are combed through a hackle or a set of coarse combs. The seeds are saved, both to plant for next year’s crop and to eat. (Both hemp and flax seeds are high in healthy oils.)

After the stalks are rippled, they are bundled together and either placed under water or spread out on a fence or in a field, so that rain and dew can work with bacteria and mold to dissolve the outer vegetable coating. This rotting process, called retting, causes no damage to the bast fibers, which are impervious to mildew, molds, fungi, and bacteria. Different methods of retting cause color changes in the fiber. Dew retting, which lets weather and oxygen help the bacteria break down the vegetable coating, produces a silvery gray color. Water retting uses warm stagnant water to dissolve the outside layer. Good water-retted fiber is the color of straw. The quality of the water is important. If the water is muddy, the fiber will be a dull gray. If the water contains iron, it can stain and weaken the fiber and also cause foxing, the rusting away of the fabric after it’s produced. After retting, the dissolved vegetable material is rinsed away and the fibers are dried again.

flax flower

flax straw

strik

Photo by Anna Yu

Next, the stalks are broken to release the bast fibers from the plant’s woody core by scutching. Scutching can be done by hand, by cracking the stalks over the knee every few inches, or more quickly with a specially designed tool called a flax brake. The strong bast fibers are then separated from the pith and any bits of vegetable matter that might remain by hackling. The fibers are combed through finer and finer hackles, blossom end first, then the root. Combing releases the strong spinnable fibers from the broken pith and begins the separation of the individual fiber bundles into increasingly finer bundles. Generally it takes six to ten passes between the sets of combs to produce a good spinning fiber.

On each pass, the waste is set aside; most of it can be used. Waste from the first pass is throwaway, historically used along with the boon (the woody core of the plant) to fire up the scouring kettle. The second pass can be retted again to make paper. By the third pass, the fibers are smooth enough to make good ropes; by the fourth, rough cloth and rug warps; by the fifth and sixth, clothing. These long fibers, as long as 4 feet (1.2 meters) depending on the type of fiber, are called line and are sold in striks. Striks maintain the order of blossom to root and are spun from the blossom end. The short fibers from the last two passes are also spinnable; called tow, they are used to make a softer, more textured yarn.

nineteenth-century flax hackle

prehistoric bast

BAST FIBERS were the first fibers that humans used. During the time of the woolly mammoth and the cave bear, before the use of metals, people spun and wove bast fibers and had well-developed cording (rope-making) and plaiting (braiding) techniques as well. The use of bast fibers virtually covered the globe; bast fiber samples have been found in fragments from the earliest ruins in Egypt, Mexico, the southwestern United States (Arizona), Peru, Switzerland, China, Russia, and Scandinavia.

Though no one can know for certain when or where the first curious mind discovered that twisting these fibers produced a useful thread, each spinner shares in that exciting moment of discovery as she learns to spin. Sisal, jute, milkweed, sunflower, yucca, agave, New Zealand flax, pineapple, artichoke, coconut—the list of bast fibers that we have used is endless, a tribute to the resourcefulness and inventiveness of spinners everywhere.

hackling

Comb the fibers through finer and finer hackles, blossom end first, 1 then the root. 2 Combing releases the strong spinnable fibers from the broken pith and begins the separation of the individual fiber bundles into increasingly finer fibers.

rippled flax

NETTLE

The nettle family grows literally worldwide; its thirty to fifty species are native to Asia, Europe, North Africa, and North America. Although its textile use now is mainly historic, at one time it was the most commonly used fiber plant in the world. It’s easy to process and spin into exceptionally strong, long-wearing threads. The fiber is impervious to ultraviolet light, mold, mildew, and bacteria. Other than iron contamination, only fire will destroy it.

nettle

Photo by Dave White

The decline in the use of nettle is probably linked to its very wildness; it was replaced by flax as we transitioned from a hunter-gatherer to a more agrarian culture. (Although we also collected and used flax before cultivation, flax made the transition from wildness to cultivation more easily than nettle.) Nettle seeds ripen unevenly and spread sporadically, making it a less reliable crop. And no matter how carefully I harvest nettle, I never escape the sting from the spikes of acid on the underside of the leaves. Although the acid becomes inactive as the plant is harvested, it can certainly raise some tender welts before it is gone.

Nettle is still used in many parts of the world that depend on wild gathering as part of their agriculture for both food and medicine as well as textiles. Nettle yarns for knitting and weaving have