Processing Nettles Experiment

Here are the samples of nettles processed three different ways.  The green, thicker fibre was fresh nettles, peeled and scraped with an old butter knife.  By old, I mean , I found an antique butter knife at the thrift store for 50cents and used it, as they have a straight, dull edge.  Modern butter knives, or table knives, have a bit of a taper to them, and often have a bit of a serrated edge at the tip.   That made it much more difficult to scrape the nettles, hence the antique knife use.

The whiter fibre was from the nettles that were dew retted.  I bundled them up and layed them on the ground, flipping them every couple of days.  Depending on what you read, it can take anywhere from two days to a couple of weeks to be fully retted.  I left the bundles for two weeks before I tried to process these.    The fibres didn't easily peel off of the bark, or the centre core, so I thought they may be under retted.  The colour was nice though.  

The darker fibres had been retted for several weeks more.  I'd actually sort of forgotten about them as I was busy with canning.  My sweetie asked me when I was going to use them as he needed the space where they were sitting, to stack wood.  The outer bark had totally disappeared in some places and there were fibres actually showing.   They were quite easy to peel off, however they were breaking at some of the nodes on the stems.  Rather than a creamy colour, they are grey.

I don't have any proper processing equipment, like a flax break or hackles, which would have made this a lot easier and more useful.   I had a mallet, some wool combs and medium carders.

The under retted nettles and I call them under retted because the outer bark was difficult to remove in a lot of places.   I lightly bashed them to break the pieces up, pulled out some by hand and them combed them.   Many pieces still stuck.  I combed the fibres to remove more of the trashy bits and after getting a bit frustrated, just spun them and hoped for the best.  They were fairly long, spun quite nicely, but some of the bits were stuck fairly firmly.  

The over retted nettles were very soft.  The outer bark released quite easily when combed, but there were still some fibres with bits out outer bark stuck to them.  I ended up carding these as the fibres were shorter after combing, maybe 3-6 inches long.   I spun them from the end of the rolag, with a semi-worsted forward draw.

The green fibres should have been spun before they dried out.   I had to twine and ply by hand, which is an acceptable way to make a strong cordage, rather than yarn.  If I had a spray bottle, I think spritzing them with a bit of water, covering them and letting them sit for a couple of hours would have made this much easier.  But the sample I made suggests that this would make a strong rope.  I think it would make a lovely addition to a basket making project.