nettle fiber

I finally have something to show for weeks and weeks of preparation on my nettle project. I can even give an opinion on a craft that I am still very far from mastering.

I must give a warning to those of week constitutions, rotting nettle stinks like poo-poo! But if you can deal with that and know that the finished product has no smell at all then it is a fun project for one who likes learning new (old) things.

Once again I took on a project out of curiosity with no practical outcome in mind. No, I take that back. If we revert to living in caves, than spinning your own nettle yarn to make garments can keep you warm as you huddle around the fire, roasting your squirrel on a stick. Awesome! THANKS TO BARRETT for taking some of the pictures for me.

The first step is to harvest the nettles, notice my thick jacket and gloves. This should be done in the fall when the nettles are very tall. I have heard it suggested that if you wait until after the first frost you won't get stung, true, but I was not going to wait. I pull up the whole plant and take them home in bundles. Then I strip the leafs in a downward motion leaving just the stalks to rett.

The next step is to rot the fibers out of our nettle stalk. I should explain where the fibers are located. The nettle plant has a thin layer of fibers surrounding a pithy center. The part we want is on the very thin outside of the stalk. This means that the fiber yield is very small compared to the size of the plant. I tried two methods of retting. The first method is to rot the stalk submerged in water. I submerged the stalks in a trash can, a pond would work also. In the trash can method you would have to dump the water a day or two after starting because the nettles start to ferment to fast due to high sugar content. The length of time for retting depends a lot on temperature, mine took about two weeks. The nettles should be stinky, slimy and when rubbed the outer layer should slip off and you should see the white fibers. Be careful not to let them get to rotten because this would degrade the fibers making them to weak to be used.

The other method would be dew retting. With dew retting you just leave the stalks on the ground for weeks until the outside rots and the fibers are free. This works in the Pacific North West where I am, but it had inconsistent results, some stalks were really rotten while others were still fresh.

Either way, you know you are done when the black slime comes off the silky white fibers when you pinch a stalk. When the stalks are ready I lay them on a flat surface and gently smash them with a flat piece of wood. This slips the fibers off to either side of the pithy, hard center. I also eased the fibers off with my hands. It is pretty disgusting yet some how gratifying to see the fibers come off the stalk. Lay them in bundles side by side so that you don't get a tangled mess to work with.

this is my messy mass, first try before I got wise!

At this point, I gently rinsed and then re mashed the fibers to release them from the sticky coating. If they were not retted enough you will never get them clean.

My next post will show the cleanish, dried fibers and what I did next!