[Regia-NA] good nettle prices?;)

[Ben Pyles]

Joy Cain <jcain at insight.rr.com> wrote:
I have a flax brake, a scutching knife and two sizes of hackles. I’ll be right over.

Sounds good... whatcha want for dinner? ;-)

According to Rita Buchanan, “A Weaver’s Garden”, pgs 40-42 there are three ways to prep the fibers from nettles: 

“...The first is to cut green stems and peel off the outer layer of fibers and skin right away (within an hour or two of cutting) and then ret the strips of fiber. The second is to cut and ret whole stems until the the fibers strip off easily. Either way you begin, finish by scraping, rinsing, combing and drying the fibers. The third method, used by North American Indians for wood nettles and stingless nettles, is to leave the dead stalks outdoors to decay until winter, then peel the fibers from the dry stem and flake off the remnants of outer skin.”

I was trying something akin to the second one, and the stem wanted to stay adhered... so now I am drying the things for a while to try to get them to be less tenacious- It has been ~105deg here for many weeks- and verry dry, so I hope the fiber isn't too brittle... should I re-wet before trying to break the fiber out?





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