btw wikline mam ale chyba nie zapytam jak koszyk uple¶æ bo mam wra¿enie ¿e wiem jak bêdzie brzmiec odpowied¼.

Raczej mo¿e kto¶ z okolic £odzi by³by chêtny zademonstrowaæ Maze jak to siê robi? Umiejêtno¶æ jest czysto praktyczna. Dziesiêæ minut patrzenia i na¶ladowania da wiêcej ni¿ cztery strony dyskusji. Proszê o odzew.

[w³okna]dwumetrowe za krótkie nie bêda:) ale za s³abe to mozliwe...

The Spinning of Nettles
By Isolda Throkmorton
© Carol J. Keith 2000, 2006

Have you ever read the fairytale about the Swan Princes? It’s
the one where eleven bothers (princes) are turned into swans
by their wicked stepmother. In a dream, their sister is instructed
to gather nettles from graveyards, extract the nettle
fiber, and then spin and weave eleven coats in order to break
the spell.
What a daunting and impossible task this seems. We all know
that nettles sting, so to be able to spin them into thread and
then weave cloth, well … impossible! But one day while I was
doing some research about flax and linen, I happened upon a
reference for nettle fabric.
History
Nettles belong to a family of plants that produce a substance
called “bast”, which is the term for strands of fibrous material
that can be spun. The best-known member of this family is
flax, from whence comes linen.
Flax is probably the most familiar bast fiber, and is believed to
have first been used during the prehistoric period. It was also
commonly used in the classical world to produce linen. However
there are extant examples of fabric from burial sites that
were at first thought to be linen, but later were proven to nettle.
In fact, recent studies have shown that a large majority of
the “linen” finds from early Scandinavia are indeed nettle
cloth, and not true linen at all.
Nettle cloth dating from the early Iron Age was found in Denmark
and Norway, along with evidence that suggests nettles
were once cultivated for the fiber industry. I also discovered
that in sixteenth and seventeenth century Scotland, nettle fiber
was still being used in the last century to weave everyday
household linens. These facts told me two things. Firstly, that
nettles were plentiful enough in northern Europe to facilitate
spinning and weaving on a large scale. Secondly, nettle produced
a fabric so fine that it was often mistaken for linen.

Apparently, the best nettle fiber comes from plants grown
where the soil type is strong loam, because it produces nettles
that grow thickly together and reach a height of over six feet.
Loam is most common in the bottom of ditches, among briars,
and in shaded valleys. We can often see such stands of nettles
along walking trails throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Nettles are often mentioned in the history of northern European
countries and seem to have been used in times of deprivation,
when flax and hemp fibers were scarce or unavailable.
This usage can be witnessed within living memory. In 1917,
during World War I, Germans soldiers wore overalls made
from a fiber comprising of 85% nettle. And, in World War II,
Germany put to work elderly peasant women that remembered
how to work and prepare nettle fiber.
After discovering these facts I believed it was entirely possible
to spin nettles into thread, so I set myself the task of finding
out how that might be accomplished.
Extracting the Fiber.
Unable to find instructions on how to actually process fiber
from stinging nettles, I decided to go with instructions for
processing flax. I found that information in a book called
Handspinning, by Eliza Leadbeater.
I found a thick stand of 7’ high nettles growing in semi-shade
near a beaver dam (nice loamy soil), and chose a fine day in
midsummer to harvest them. Borrowing my husband’s metal
working gloves, I pulled the nettles up by their roots, tied
them in several bundles, and hung them to dry. After a couple
of days the tiny needle hairs had dried enough that they no
longer contained any stinging fluids. The spinning fiber is
found along the main stems, so I then stripped all the leaves
and side shoots off and stacked the stems under a big shady
tree.
A process called “retting” actually releases the spinable fiber
from the woody plant stalks. This happens by leaving the
stalks in water, or by leaving them in a shady spot so that
nightly dew rets away the green bark. I chose to simulate
“dew retting” by spraying the stalks with water daily for a period
of about 3 weeks.
For some reason I imagined the green bark would simply dissolve
and leave me with lovely strands of spinnable fiber.

In actuality the retting process “decomposes the adhesive
substances that bind the fibers to each other and the woody
portion of the stem.”
That meant I was left looking at a bundle of sticks.
In flax preparation the next stage is to break the sticks and
release the fiber. In period this was accomplished by running
the line flax through a wooden “flax break”, where a heavy
bar would break the sticks leaving lengths of wonderful fiber. I
tried a heavy wooden mallet on the nettle stalks to try to reproduce
this effect, but nothing seemed to be happening. I
was left with bits of broken stick and something that looked
like thin bark. Where was the fiber?
On removing the bits of broken stick from a piece of the barklike
material and, looking closer, noticed something splaying
out from one end that looked very much like fiber. I quickly
worked the “bark” back and forth between my hands and suddenly
there it was! I then set to work stripping the fiber off
the nettle stems entirely by hand. This was a laborious job
that made for sore fingers. On reflection, I believe the fiber
would not release because the gummy substance had not
completely dissolved during retting.

Preparation and Spinning.
In the next stage, line flax is combed with a “flax hackle” - but
my nettle fiber was only 6 inches long, thereby making that
impossible. Instead I used a wool card as a fine-toothed comb
and ended up with some nicely prepared fiber. The color of the
fiber was light blonde-green, and it smelled like new mown
hay.
For spinning the nettle I chose a fast top-whorl spindle weighing
just over an ounce. I knew that flax spinners dampen their
fingers in water to help the fiber spin, and I found much the
same to be true for nettle; although damp fingers made it feel
a little bit sticky to the touch. Again this made me think it had
needed more retting time.
Concerning the length and qualities of nettle fiber, Mrs Grieve
says:
The length of Nettle fibre varies from ¾ to 2½ inches: all
above one and three eighth inches is equal to the best
Egyptian cotton. It can be dyed and bleached in the same
way as cotton, and when mercerized is but slightly inferior
to silk. It has been considered much superior to cotton for
velvet and plush.
My nettle fiber came out much longer than this and it made a
stiff, greenish colored thread. To try to lighten the color I
boiled the spun and plied fiber in soapy water for about thirty
minutes. It turned almost pure white! It still felt a little too
stiff for clothing but, by working it between my hands, I ended
up with very useable thread.

Conclusion.
I cannot begin to convey the thrill of spinning my first nettle
fiber. By trial and effort, I had managed to succeed in doing
what I thought was an impossible task. I am still not sure if I
extracted and prepared the fiber in the best possible manner.
Perhaps a different, or more dedicated method of retting,
would produce better results (I am far from expert in these
matters). However the experiment seems to have worked and
I now have some lengths of nettle thread for my effort, which
I find just a little magical.
Of course, I am now wondering which other plants can be
used for spinning. I have heard that it is possible to spin milk
thistle down and, of course, there’s always that old tale about
spinning straw into gold . . .

Bibliography
Barber, Elizabeth Wayland. Women’s Work. W.W. Norton &
Company. New York, 1994.
Grieve, M. Mrs. A Modern Herbal. Barnes & Noble, Inc. Chatham,
Kent, UK. 1996.
Leadbeater, Eliza. Handspinng. Select Books. Mountain View,
Mo. 1983.
Nylén, Anna-Maja. Swedish Handcraft. Van Nostrand Reinhold
Company. New York, 1977.