For my first experience with spinning flax, I selected Rose Bouquet, a 7-oz bundle containing seven different shades of rose-colored fiber nests from the color genius over at Nest Fiber Studio. This fiber had been sitting in my stash for about a year, and since June is the month of the Rose Moon, this seemed to be the perfect time to spin it.
The Prep
I started out by splitting each nest in half lengthwise, weighing each section to be sure they were identical sizes. Then I arranged the nestlets into a gradient, with cool colors on one side and warm ones on the other. Finally, I flipped the color order so the first bobbin started with cool and ended with warm, and vice versa for the second bobbin. This gave me a gradient 2-ply, where each end was a mix of the lightest warm and cool colors, meeting in the middle with the deepest shade.
The Spin
This fiber is a blend of 50% Merino wool, 25% silk, and 25% flax. The flax was mostly well integrated with the rest of the fiber but there were some… grassy bunches. It did feel a lot like I imagine it would to spin grass or hay, which I guess isn’t far off.
I want to like spinning flax, given its roughly six thousand years of fabric history, but in practical terms it is a little annoying to work with. The staple length is nice and long, but the fibers are stiff and don’t want to align themselves with the wool and silk. I don’t mind that per se, but didn’t want to end up with scratchy yarn, and the sticky-outy flax fibers are definitely prickly. It was hard to resist picking them out like I would any other VM, but eventually I was able to leave it except for the really unruly bits. My hope was that maybe flax softens up a lot with washing and wearing, and that’s what transforms it into lovely linen fabric?
The Ply
I spun this fiber on my Schacht Ladybug and plied it on Minerva, the Athena Capricorn wheel, which came with a fat 8-oz bobbin. It might be a teensy bit underplied (not quite enough twist), but I’m still tweaking the settings on the Capricorn. I was a little concerned while I was plying that the colors weren’t lining up well and I’d somehow messed up in separating the nestlets by weight, but it worked out just fine. The gradient blends nicely, and I ended up with only about 5 yards of chain ply at the end. As it turned out, my hope that it would soften up after washing is pretty much exactly what happened.
The Result
And so, as a newly experienced flax spinner, I bring you a 528-yard river of soft roses, just in time for the last day of June.
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