On May 6th, after the rain stopped, I stopped by the flax plot to see how things were going. There were no flax seedlings, but there was a lot of some other plant that I didn’t recognize.
They were big, robust, and had very deep and spreading roots. Since the flax hadn’t emerged yet, I decided to seize the opportunity to weed out as much of these deep-rooted plants as I could. So, I got a pitchfork and began digging. Continue reading “Weeding Out Campion”
On Sunday April 30th I planted this year’s flax crop. Thanks to the generosity and support of Bernard Brennan at Amethyst Farm and Jeffrey Silberman in the Textile Development and Marketing Department at Fashion Institute of Technology, I am going big this year. Well, big for me. Up until now I have never grown much more than 225 square feet in a given season. This year I have planted approximately 1500 square feet! Continue reading “Planting Electra”
Last week was April vacation, which meant I had more free time than usual to do fun things. Last Tuesday I was thrilled to spend about four hours with Lisa Bertoldi getting some instruction in spinning flax. You might think, with all the flaxy things I do, that I would already be good at spinning flax. Not yet. It has been a goal for me for many years, but recently it has made it to the top of my “urgent” list. Urgency plus vacation days equals actually devoting time to it! Thanks to Lisa, I am quite a bit better at spinning flax now. (12/30/2023 Edited: Lisa no longer has a website but you can read more about her on the Working Weavers Studio Trail website)
Here is the strick of flax spread out on the table. I am getting the fiber ready to dress the distaff. You can see the distaff on the left:
Once the morning sessions at the Flax and Linen Symposium were over, and had obviously been successful, I moved into the afternoon mode. I have already posted photos of the demo session in the afternoon. I didn’t post this photo at first because it seemed too frivolous. However, I decided to include it because you can obviously see that I am happy. Goofy and happy. As nervous as I was and as much as my legs were shaking, it was fun. So, here’s a photo of me having fun amidst the anxiety:
The rest of the morning was about retting and flax processing. Again, it’s hard to take photos in the dark, and it’s hard to summarize. The first speaker about retting was Cassie Dickson (John C. Campbell Folk School) with her amazing examples of the different colors that different retting conditions can produce. Continue reading “Later on Saturday Morning at the Flax and Linen Symposium”
I was especially nervous about how things would go on Saturday because I had a lot of responsibilities that day. For one thing, I was a speaker on the first panel in the morning, which was focused on the botany of flax, growing flax, and seed saving. My legs were literally shaking from Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon.
The first three speakers of the morning on Saturday were: Carolyn Wetzel (fellow study group member who is also a professional botanist, lacemaker, spinner, and weaver); Jeff Silberman (who heads up the textiles and marketing department at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, consults globally about cotton and flax, and grows flax and dye plants for education and for fun); and me. Continue reading “Early Saturday Morning at the Flax and Linen Symposium!”
Picking up where I left off…. During the demonstration session on Saturday afternoon, I couldn’t personally walk around and take pictures of everything, since I was responsible for running one of the flax dressing stations. Thankfully, my beloved Matthew ran around to do the photo-documentation. I hope presenters and participants don’t mind being featured here, but I really want to show photos of people doing their flaxy thing. What made this weekend so incredible was all the people who presented and attended. The objects and artifacts were fascinating and informative, no doubt, but the fact that living people were actively examining, interpreting, and using them was the most thrilling and meaningful part to me. The expressions of rapt attention, concentration, puzzlement, and joy are demonstrative of the feelings we were all experiencing!
The first stop on our mini-tour of Saturday afternoon’s demo session is Christian and Johannes Zinzendorf’s display of tools and antique textiles. Here are a couple wide angle views:
Continue reading “More About Saturday Afternoon at the Flax and Linen Symposium!”
OK, obviously I only managed to write a couple posts about dye plants before I returned to flax. But this is a pretty big deal so I feel OK about prioritizing it. We had our long-awaited flax and linen symposium and it was totally awesome!
The official title was “Flax and Linen: Following the Thread from Past to Present” and our flax and linen study group organized it in collaboration with Historic Deerfield. We worked on the planning and organization for about two years, and even though we tried to think through every detail and put together a program that we hoped would appeal to a wide range of people, we really had no idea how it would all turn out. Well, it turned out fabulously. It was pretty much everything I hoped it would be, and I was so grateful and happy. Continue reading “Flax and Linen Symposium!”
I realized in my last post I didn’t show the buckets of transplanted flax. They transplanted just fine, which was a useful discovery.
After we came back from our weekend away on July 9-10 and found that the seeds in the buckets of flax at home had been chomped, I bought two new types of rodent repellent and a solar robotic owl for the garden. The first type of repellent I tried, Bobbex-R, stinks to high heaven! I wanted to run away from it myself as I was spraying it. We have been having a sustained spell of very hot weather, and the directions said not to spray when it’s over 85 degrees, so I waited to spray the plants at dusk when the temperature cooled off a little. It was initially more effective than the Plantskydd. I didn’t detect any new damage overnight. After a day or so, though, things went back to normal. Sigh. Continue reading “Last Straw(s)”
I read that a chili pepper/garlic spray would keep rodents away from plants, so I gave it a try. We grow a lot of chilis. A major goal of our gardening endeavors, besides growing flax and dye plants, is to grow tomatillos and chilis to make home-made salsa verde. We also grow garlic for the salsa, but it’s too precious to use for mouse-repellent so I just used store-bought garlic.
For each batch of spay, I crushed up 14-16 dried chilis:
