Our flax-to-linen team met last Wednesday evening, July 4th, at Ken’s house. The main event turned out to be a wonderful surprise! Beatrice showed us a beautiful piece of cloth she spun and wove from the 2010 crop. This took a huge effort – maybe a hundred hours of her scarce free time – using a spinning wheel and a small loom. Use of a spinning machine would sharply increase productivity with respect to time-on-task. A larger loom, which she has acquired, will help too.
Because we meet so rarely, but are doing so much, there was much to discuss, so we could have gone into some subjects in more depth. I wanted to discuss overall strategy, but others had specifics to deal with about hackles, upcoming demonstrations, and other matters, so we only intermittently discussed strategy. I brought some proposals which the group accepted without a lot of debate.
So here is the plan: We have abandoned hope of getting rotary, high-production machinery for dressing the 2012 crop in place by harvest time, in two months. Hackling is particularly a problem, since we have few hackles even for handheld hackling. Also fall rettting is risky due to weather. So we accepted that we will let a generous amount of this crop go to seed, for future planting and maybe for oilseed pressing as well. We will still have a huge amount of flax straw, and we will have to find a way to store it while we develop processing equipment.
We badly need more committed energy on the project. We are going to do more public demonstrations, particularly at Fibrations on August 16th, and at the James Bay Market.
We are going to set up as system whereby people who want to help can earn some sort of credit points by taking on tasks necessary to the project’s success. This could engage fibre arts keeners who want access to raw materials, processing tools, and lessons. It also enables us to clarify who is really with the project, and shake off people who want to claim involvement and speak for us but won’t help us in times of need. We decided to separate the project from Transition Victoria.
Since that meeting, Barb has been working on lining up storage. Ken is researching hackle designs. I’ve been out at the field correcting various malfunctions in the irrigation system. Beatrice is preparing for upcoming demonstrations, and Brian, after his herculean efforts at the raking and seeding, is busy with his new house, and his business constructing stone walls. Liz volunteered to put together a handout describing the project. If anyone wants to get this website better set up for our purposes, give me a call at 250-386-7984,
Well, we’ve had a very busy hot day at James Bay Market demonstrating how we turn flax to linen. Lots and lots of people interested and there was hardly a slow moment. Ken, Beatrice & I worked the whole time 9am to 3pm breaking, skutching, hackling the flax. Breatrice was great with the kids and sat spinning away impressing everyone, & Nancy and Terrence coming over from their trip to the mainland to help and to learn how to work the tools and process some fibre. There were visitors from all over the world there and we impressed them all.
FIRST CLOTH
Our flax-to-linen team met last Wednesday evening, July 4th, at Ken’s house. The main event turned out to be a wonderful surprise! Beatrice showed us a beautiful piece of cloth she spun and wove from the 2010 crop. This took a huge effort – maybe a hundred hours of her scarce free time – using a spinning wheel and a small loom. Use of a spinning machine would sharply increase productivity with respect to time-on-task. A larger loom, which she has acquired, will help too.
Because we meet so rarely, but are doing so much, there was much to discuss, so we could have gone into some subjects in more depth. I wanted to discuss overall strategy, but others had specifics to deal with about hackles, upcoming demonstrations, and other matters, so we only intermittently discussed strategy. I brought some proposals which the group accepted without a lot of debate.
So here is the plan: We have abandoned hope of getting rotary, high-production machinery for dressing the 2012 crop in place by harvest time, in two months. Hackling is particularly a problem, since we have few hackles even for handheld hackling. Also fall rettting is risky due to weather. So we accepted that we will let a generous amount of this crop go to seed, for future planting and maybe for oilseed pressing as well. We will still have a huge amount of flax straw, and we will have to find a way to store it while we develop processing equipment.
We badly need more committed energy on the project. We are going to do more public demonstrations, particularly at Fibrations on August 16th, and at the James Bay Market.
We are going to set up as system whereby people who want to help can earn some sort of credit points by taking on tasks necessary to the project’s success. This could engage fibre arts keeners who want access to raw materials, processing tools, and lessons. It also enables us to clarify who is really with the project, and shake off people who want to claim involvement and speak for us but won’t help us in times of need. We decided to separate the project from Transition Victoria.
Since that meeting, Barb has been working on lining up storage. Ken is researching hackle designs. I’ve been out at the field correcting various malfunctions in the irrigation system. Beatrice is preparing for upcoming demonstrations, and Brian, after his herculean efforts at the raking and seeding, is busy with his new house, and his business constructing stone walls. Liz volunteered to put together a handout describing the project. If anyone wants to get this website better set up for our purposes, give me a call at 250-386-7984,
billy@inhabitvictoria.org
Well, we’ve had a very busy hot day at James Bay Market demonstrating how we turn flax to linen. Lots and lots of people interested and there was hardly a slow moment. Ken, Beatrice & I worked the whole time 9am to 3pm breaking, skutching, hackling the flax. Breatrice was great with the kids and sat spinning away impressing everyone, & Nancy and Terrence coming over from their trip to the mainland to help and to learn how to work the tools and process some fibre. There were visitors from all over the world there and we impressed them all.