CLUB AND BREAKE, NOW THE FUN BEGINS!
OCTOBER 2023
I WILL BECOME A CLIMATE REFUGEE AND SEEK SHELTER IN A STABLE
The nettles enjoyed themselves in the bathroom with full gusto on the heating cables. Nope, neither environmentally friendly nor wallet friendly. But what don't you do for nettle fiber! All July and August they occupied the bathroom that looked like a field. Thank goodness I have a patient husband! But pretty soon they were dry and nice on their toes and knees; It was time to club and make a fuss!
The advantage of heating the bundles is that the cellulose becomes brittle and breaks more easily in the mess. I therefore did not take more than 2-3 bundles at a time into the garden in Sylling for fear that they would get "cold". And now I got far more fiber than in July! We are still talking about small amounts of fiber, but from spiderwebs and dust the journey now changed tofiber bundles... I put a tarpaulin on the ground, so that I could keep the straw and cellulose for further use. My dogs were super happy with the nettle roots that fell down from the mess as the most delicious snacks with the smell of an outdoor toilet.
I still fought the weather gods. There was too much humidity, - even when the sun was shining the ground was still damp. Something more sustainable and effective was needed. The solution was to rent an empty stable in Sylling. I thought of a certain celebrity couple who also sought refuge in a stable 2023 years ago. Do you think there will be anyone talking about my escape from the stable in 2000 years?
But there was no oven here, and this heating thing had proven to be indispensable… The solution was Finn.no (digital marketplace for selling used items) once again. No, it wasn’t an oven, but a drying cabinet for clothes. Out with all the hangers and pegs, and in with protruding nettle bundles. Every morning, I filled the cabinet, turned on the heat and had my first coffee of the day. When it was drunk, the first branches were ready to be beaten. Then I just had to refill throughout the day.
Now that I was working inside, I stood there wearing a dust mask all day. I banged / hammered and made a fuss. I didn’t use the hemp claw, which we thought would function as a clamp or a shaker. It probably wasn’t meant for that kind of work. The fiber was gathered into bundles to be crocheted later. On a good day I managed 20 bundles, but then I was so tired that I couldn't do anything else for the rest of the day.
I swept up the straw and cellulose and packed them in bags for further product development. Nothing was to be thrown away here! I tried the roots for dyeing, but they didn't give much color. They were probably quite diluted after two rounds of retting.
THE PREPARATION ROUTINES WERE:
Warming up the scallions in a warming cabinet.
Pounding/malting the bundles on a work table. Beating and turning, beating and turning until all the stems had been beaten and beaten several times. (This operation could possibly be omitted or shortened somewhat, since the hammer did the same job.)
Breaking the bundles by starting a little gently at the outside of the jaw, and then hitting harder as I moved the scallion inward into the jaw. It took the most time to break the roots, which mostly fell off. Eventually, I therefore switched to cutting off the roots with pliers. (The whole thing with the roots was pointless!) Then it was time to break the bundles into three parts, which were occasionally divided again.
Then I was going to use the hemp claw as a substitute for a shaker or clamp, but I avoided this. In retrospect, I learned from Vaclav Michaelicka how important this step in the process was, and that I got a lot more work done by skipping it. I will come back to this when I write about the CETRAT gang.
The bundles retained the marking ribbons from now on and were to be hecled later in the workshop at home.
In this film I am clubbing and breaking. The purpose of clubbing (that I hit the bundle) is to break up the cellulose as much as possible before it gets any more beating in the buckskin. The roots took a lot of time to clubbing, and many of them fell off, so I switched to cutting them off with rose shears. I found that I got less trouble when I bent the bundle while I was clubbing. Maybe this is wrong? It definitely made it considerably less trouble! The film is about 2.5 minutes long, but it took 8 - 10 minutes to clubbing and braking. I can't help but think: Did they really spend that much time on this in the old days, or is it all just nonsense? |
TEAR OVER THE FIBER INTO THREE – FIVE PARTS
It seems pointless to tear over the fiber when it should be as long as possible. But again I come back to this with string and long fiber. Because you really can't compare nettle fiber with flax and hemp; THEY ARE DIFFERENTLY STRUCTURED.
Vaclav Michaelicka tried to explain this to me, and – without being able to guarantee that I understood it 100%, I will try to explain further:
The fiber of flax and hemp grows from bottom to top in a long fiber like a long, continuous "hair". On nettle, on the other hand, a fiber grows from the bottom and a good distance up the stem (I don't know how far, I guess 25 – 40 cm?) Then comes a new fiber, but this one has started a little below where the first one ended so that they overlap each other. This continues up the stem with overlapping fibers. Each of these fibers again consists of many small groups that lie hollow in lumps, also the overlapping ones. They consist of lignin, pectin, cellulose, rubber and maybe something else. I don't remember!
In addition, the stem is like bamboo, - it has joints or, as Petra calls it, "knees". Anyone who has worked with fiber on individual nettles is familiar with how these become the fragile points where the fiber easily breaks. When you have removed the cellulose and scraped away the green plant material, small "scars" remain where the joints used to be.
SO, - when the flax fiber breaks, it is called tow and is considered lower quality because the thread is not as strong and smooth with many small pieces. But when the nettle breaks, on the other hand, the "stry pieces" can be as long as the long fiber. It is therefore unreasonable to call something stry, when the plant is divided so that it has to break.
So while you club and make a fuss, the fiber strip becomes longer and looser. So to avoid losing it in pieces, it is better to break over when it is loose, so that the parts can "break" into natural parts and be put together into a unit. So you do not break the fiber across - only where it will naturally split.
FIBER IN ALL POSSIBLE COLORS
Something that was difficult to convey through pictures and film was the color variations of the fiber. They ranged from light, light blonde to green and dark gray. Most of them had the color of hay. Partly this was due to soil and growing conditions, and partly it was due to retting. The green ones all came from the last batch that turned green on the last day with a green slime at the water's edge. Later I learned how all the fiber became shinier and brighter when I crocheted them into carding. Simply because they got rid of the "plant pulp layer" and became cleaner. The carding got a dirty layer of dust that just had to be knocked off. I'll come back to this soon.
It was FUN to breake, but everyone who came by to see was surprised by how much work it was. But regardless of the silly time spent, this was one of the nicest things I've ever done. It just felt so incredibly, incredibly WELL inside. I was physically tired every day. When was the last time I was that way? Normally I'm tired at the end of the day, but then it's usually mental. Getting to use my body for something that for others was nonsense still felt meaningful to me. Every night I thanked the nettles when I laid my head on the pillow. Sleep well up there in the stable, see you tomorrow!
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