re: #85 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

I used to, back in the day, process wool from sheep to skein. Just watching this makes it clear that compare to wool, linen is an elite product. There are far more steps to take and you don’t get so much end product from working with it. Prior to the invention of the spinning wheel, everyone who wasn’t high class spun wool using a spindle because if you didn’t you might not get clothes. Even in devotional pictures, the Virgin Mary can be found with her distaff and spindle. But with linen, the spinning, as you can see, was specialized. Yeah, you can do it with a distaff and spindle, but watching that guy spread out the flax strands and then tie them up with a ribbon, it’s like, naw, you can’t have a kid doing this. And the preparation before the spinning! Yeah, I’ve carded wool (and I have a drum carder somewhere around here), but wool staples are shorter than flax fiber and they don’t have to be so lined up before you spin them.

This is a long process, and by comparison, raising the sheep, shearing them, skirting the fleece, washing, carding, spinning, dyeing, knitting/crocheting/weaving, while still labor intensive, isn’t that labor intensive. And wool isn’t so finicky in the spinning.