One Nettle Sewing Thread Challenge
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2024
- Test your cordmaking skills by seeing how long a piece of even cordage you can make from one single stinging nettle.
#onenettlesewingthreadchallenge
I now have a 'buy me a coffee' page which helps fund my ongoing research and the making of these free videos. If you'd like to support me, please visit ko-fi.com/sall... Thank you!
In Kenya, people (including me) spin sisal, sanseveria and other fibers on our thighs. To the best of my knowledge, there are no spindle whorls in the archaeological record here though though they do appear in Zimbabwe/Mapungubwe. .
In southern italy the nettle cloth is a local tradition, they let the stems sit in water for some hours just to have them become more tender, so that the process of extracting the fibres gets easier and requires less time
Fab, i can’t believe I get so excited about nettles now, my walks are not the same. My family love the words ‘hedge bothering’ although dread me shopping after our walks with a rucksack of nettles and brambles. Love the smell and touch of making this cordage and thread. Thank you so much for you videos.
You are most welcome! The world needs more hedge botherers!
I watched this and found huge burdock on the farm. I decided to try my hand at making some cordage. It worked and was so much fun! Thank You
Wow! I didn’t know you could do this with burdock. I didn’t even know you could do it with nettles.
I remember the Hans Christian Anderson fairytale "The Wild Swans". 11 princes turned into swans, and their sister had to weave 11 coats from stinging nettles to free them from the spell. I had no idea what stinging nettles were when I was a kid, but I know what the prickles are like now! And after watching you make this thread from nettles I understand what the process is. Does the thread ever get soft? Could you make clothing from nettles? Seems it would be really rough to me.
I've seen and held some nettle fabric cloths - and it's super soft! A little like cotton or rayon. But that was probably not cordage, like it's made in this video. If I was to guess it's a different process.
It's a fabric that gets better with wear, but then most bast fibres are like that. It can be every bit as fine and soft as linen.
@@SallyPointer I never thought "nettle fabric" would be a google pic search I would do, but it was really enlightening! ty xx
I’ve read that story too and I honestly never thought that the nettle shirts were real! This channel is really educating me on that!
@@SallyPointer is the fabric made from the completed cordage?
I LOVE this!! I'm absolutely adopting "hedge bothering" as a term haha
The world needs more hedge-botherers!
@@SallyPointer I agree!
I am always in awe when I watch your nettle videos. I really wonder who first said, "You know, this thing can hurt me, but I bet I can make something from it!" We have a patch of nettles nearby, and I've seen more as I've been out exploring. And I keep wondering, "Should I?"
You should!
It was probably less about that it could sting you, and more that it was extremely common and not being used for other things.
definitely recommend eating the leaves or making tea with them, you just have to squish them first to break the prickles and you can pop them in your mouth or dry them for later
Reminds me of the time I was walking along a Canal where the weeds had been "weed wacked".
Looking down, I thought I saw a bundle of frayed plastic cord. It turned out to be the Fibers from a cutdown Thistle Stem. Those Fibers were rather strong !
Why would worry you bored anyone. I watched multiple of your nettle videos and they are super fascinating. Took me a while to figure out which plant nettles were, but with the help of the qualifier 'stinging' I got there. I learnt nalbinding recently and your videos just made the joy of exploring this craft even greater.
I had bought myself a little skein of nettle yarn! I was so impressed with how soft it actually is and can’t wait to see how it works up in a project.
Where did you buy it? I am interested in trying this.
Thank you so much Sally! Normally I speed up videos and skip forward. I enjoyed every bit of this Video and even slowed down the early bits. Your timing is perfect and every bit of your video is worth watching. I just found you and am so grateful. Thank you!
The video was anything but nettlesome. I have learned the words hedge-botherer and putter-togetherer in a single week. Thanks!
This is so nice-looking! I like that it stays green and doesn't turn brown after it dries!
Two years on that sample is now more a brown shade, but it's been in the sun a lot
Hedge cred may just be the best thing I’ve ever heard!
So much love for this! I will definitely be checking out your "prehistoric" stuffs because I'm researching medieval use of nettle cloth and how to make it myself.
I made this for the first time today! I didn't do the challenge because it was my first try but I think it turned out really well, it's acceptably thin like maybe twine, but I don't think I could break it just by tugging on it
I used about 6 nettles, but the ones here aren't very tall. I haven't measured how much I got yet but I'd say it's definitely over 10 feet.
Very nice. I wish we had the freedom to experiment with hemp the same way.
I actually harvested my first pint of nettle seeds this week and I love that this popped up! I just finished my first thread! So cool! Can’t wait to make more! Thank you! Your twisting skills are on point! 😁
This would be a fun thing for children to learn. Once taught, they could make a useable string all on their own, from something in the garden. The word I’m looking for is autonomy, I think.
Nice one! It's so nice to see these videos: I felt as if I was the only one interested in making string, by hand, from raw materials. I am interested in trying to make cordage from the fibres of garden plants, such as Kniphofia. Recognising that cordage making is a basic technology, I'd like to try as many plants as I can, from my garden. So far, I've collected fibres, but haven't known how to set about it. Thanks to you, I now have some idea. Thank you!
Glad the video is back! I was worried I would never be able to see it!
Just gremlins in the works
This was wonderful, thank you. And so loved the Froglets appearance at the beginning. 😍
So delighted with the content since I found your channel a few months ago❤️. I'm really glad that basic life skills from the past are still celebrated and preserved. I intend to introduce my daughter (a surprise gift from the universe 22 years after I thought I had finished having children!)to handwork and in our home schooling. I to nurture an appreciation of effort and love of the wild in her
Hello from Sweden! So nice and inspiering. Wehave a lot o nettles in our garden. I eat Them in doop and smoothies. Now I Will try this!
The guys at good and basic brought me here last year. I totally love your content and I'm chuffed you're almost at the 5k mark!
Keep up the great work. You're inspiring
Thank you!
This really brings some of those old fairy tales to life!
Watching you I can feel the work you are doing because of my own experiments of years ago and it makes me glad you are doing it! Thank you for the experience of your channel and for you.
Stunning welds of cross-epoch media: your presentation is deeply confirming.
Y❤️U have made me a student again ❣️ I want to DO this so much!!! Am soaking up everything you do ❣️TY, Lady Sally.
wow. this was really fascinating. Thanks.
Beautiful hedgemanship .thank you and best wishes from Ireland 🇮🇪 🌱💚
Another excellent video, thank you Sally. Bonus points for Froglets.
Everyone needs froglets. I'm a massive Clangers fan 😄
@@SallyPointer Bagpuss and Clangers fan here.
Thank you Sally, just a lovely bit of nettle processing.
It's October 2022 and I am a newbie to this and I want to try all this out, but I think I have left it too long in the year to gather my supplies, but I am keen to learn as much as I can about making my own fibre and stuff. I think I want to make my own items for use at home. And today my fibres too... Fascinating to learn so much new to me stuff! Thank you.
A stunning weld of cross epoch media: this research presentation is deeply inspiring.
Brilliant loved it
Love this stuff. We used to do these things as kids. I guess I forget not everyone is lucky enough to grow up on large estates with parents whom challenge their minds. I guess I can get very forgetful of all the privileges my parents bestowed upon us. We had much, but we worked hard for it. If we wanted fishing nets we first had to create our own before they would buy us any. Etc. Just so we could appreciate what effort went into that which we had. We had a grand estate. Our friends called us spoiled. What they didn't see was dad framed out our rooms, but we had to wire, insulate, drywall, put in the stone slab flooring hang the doors, finish all woodwork trim etc ourselves. Needless to say we were probably the only kids of our generation that didn't stick things on our walls. Because we knew the work that went into making them and what would be required to patch holes.
It's so nice to see people keeping it alive. I'm very grateful to have come across your channel. Yesterday I was a bit harsh I think. I believe all people know this stuff from youth on. Forgetting to be grateful and forgetting not everyone grew up the self sufficient way I did.
This is so awesome, thank you for your time 8m showing us! I have alot of nettles where I live and need to do something with them...
What a lovely and cool video!! ❤️
Wow amazing 🤩
I love your term "hedge-bothering."
Lovely video as always Sally. I wondered how do you wash these clothes made of natural materials late when they're worn?
Nettle washes just as linen does, so you can be quite rough with it
@@SallyPointer thank you for quick reply. I meant the detergent or something alike what is it that you use, I should've formed my question better, sorry!
@@ishka3405 exactly what you'd wash linen with, so any soap or detergent that you'd normally wash natural fibres with. The suds from saponin rich plants like conker or ivy are good too.
Thank you
Nice one, Sally! Love from Sweden ❤️
Thank you x
I like you a lot thanks for teaching us
thank you
Portugal
Thank you
This can be collected fresh and dried also to process? Does it work to rinse of green bits after scraping? We have Milkweed nearby and want to try that. Wish Sarah Swett would do a vid on milkweed threads (she mentioned you on her blog).
Once peeled, you can store the bark indefinitely. Scraping dried nettle is a little different to fresh, I start with dry rubbing and then go on to scraping, but it's all good!
This is making me want to try this but its October almost December and despite not taking care of my very tiny courtyard garden thingie I don't have any nettles!
Mark your diary for next year! Between midsummer and the autumn equinox is good for nettles in the UK, you might get a longer season elsewhere
I'd just pick the old, already dry stems in winter/spring and bash them up in a cloth to release the fibres...
Doesn't work in my area, our winters are too wet. Excellent plan if you have very cold dry winter weather though.
Have you used nettled to dye wool before? I found a patch of nettles in my yard and would like to dye something with them!
Yep, standard alum mordant, use quite a lot of nettle and modify with iron or copper afterwards for muted olive greens
@@SallyPointer I've only used them for tea. This is a fab idea! Any chance of a demo vid?
@@davemcgarvie2746 I'll see what I can do!
Completely non-voting! Thank you very much.
Oops That shd have been "completely non-boring"!
Sooo...67 .7 inches of thread. Can't remember exactly how long the nettle stalk was, but about 48 inches?
Huh.
I kinda expected more length, and more obsessive focus on 'how thin is thin'.....but this is really respectable!
I've definitely done thinner and longer versions, but it's always fun to see what an individual nettle yields whatever the results.
The twining thing. That's what I meant. Language. HAH!
Hi Sally, I live close to a river and at times the stinging nettles grow as high as 6’ -0” do you think at this length the fibres would be to tough? Great video and very interesting. It pushed me onto flax as well. Thanks Bob Oxon…
Try one and see, some years my local ones are up ove my head and generally all are good
Here is a video on making a turkey blanket (which is a fascinating thing) but the bit I think will be of particular interest to you starts at 3:37 and ends about the 11 minute mark as its about how she spins and plies yucca fibre: ruclips.net/video/6L4qRn3RIDc/видео.html
...hello! wonderful videos, and im excited to try this - a question, i have dry stocks, dry nettle sticks without leaves, a few months dry, can i still use them? many thanks! (i used the leaves earlier and left the stocks)
Try them and see! If your climate is like mine though you may find nettles harvested this year aren't quite ready yet, but only one way to be sure.
Yay, it worked this time ^_^
I hope you'll show us your pouches too : )
Had to reload the whole thing, not sure what gremlins got in there. I might do a video on plausible costuming for Neolithic education, it's a popular area at the moment on the schools curriculum.
@@SallyPointer That would be awesome!
I just found your channel. Outstanding, Not only are you beautiful but smart. Thank you
Do your wrists ever hurt from twisting cord? The repetition while meditative would probably hurt after awhile. Or Atleast that’s what happened with me and crochet.
I would like to know how the ancestors made a very fine thread or perhaps they didn't, the finer threads may have required the spindle tool.
Splicing is the answer! You can join single fibres together that way as in the gossamer Egyptian linen and a spindle only becomes useful to ply two strands together then.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge! I have a question if I may. After you store your thread do you need to moisten the thread before use to make it pliable?
Thanks!
For most uses no, but I sometimes run fine threads through my mouth if extra flexibility is needed whilst working
On a walk last week I saw some tall nettle growing in a park near to me. Usually I have only seen them shin height at most, but these where up to my hip (1m) in late winter here in SE Australia. Went back today for some 'hedge bothering' and now I have an open paper bag of gently coiled strips waiting to dry and a few tingly fingers. Happy with my mornings activities. Would you say this is the cambium layer that we're saving?
I am watching the nettles in my West Australian vegetable garden (from seedlings of other plants that aid permaculture friends shared with me, so I now have a goodly crop of nettles too) growing taller and wondering what month here corresponds to the right time to harvest. It is July 2023 now and I see your comment dated 11 months ago. Thanks for your comment so I can make an informed guess.
I am also pondering planting flax seeds with an eye to trying linen of my own.
Couldn’t you come with a deer antler comb?
Great video... thanks
Hi Thank you for the video, wonderful! This make so much sense. is the drying for an hour (or more) for shrinkage? I think nettle season is right now in New England, the seeds aren't fully mature. What constitutes the end of nettle season? vicky
Cordage is always best made with dried material so any shrinkage is out of the way. If you are getting good fibre off your nettles, they are in season! Some areas harvest after the frosts, round here it's whilst the skin peels off easily
@@SallyPointer thank you. I'm going out front to harvest now.
ASMR
Question from the very newly initiated: is it not 4 ply if you’re spinning two threads on either side because you’re folding them?
If you twisted four strands together it would be 4 ply. The basic reverse twist cordage is made of two strands, so 2ply
With spinning flax, spit is commonly used so I don't actually know why but Im assuming natural substances in the fiber get a bit sticky which help the spinning proccess and to keep the fibers from snapping. Maybe someone knows why? So would spit also help wetting the twist with nettle?
I have heard that flax stem has similar mucilaginous (gluey) properties to flax seeds, which you may have used as a sticky ingredient in cooking. (add a bit of water to ground flax seeds and the rest of the ingredients of the muslie bar stick together better) So the moisture would help to slick the fibres together as they spin.
I'm reading the text.
Here are a few ideas that I had while watching your video:
* Instead of pounding the stem to separate the fibers; wouldn't it be easier to just firmly roll it out with a rolling pin? You could roll several stalks simultaneously; and thus speed up the process.
* Wouldn't it, also, be easier to split the bark off, if you were to soak the stems first?
* And lastly, when you are scrapng off the 'green stuff'; wouldn't it be easier just to allow the fibers to dry out first, and skip the scraping step altogether? You could then rub them between your hands; or use some kind of bristled tool, to firmly brush off the dried flakes? Again, you could 'brush' several stalks at the same time, speeding things up.
You could then rehydrate the fibers, if needed, to make them pliable again for making the 'yarn'.
All these methods would have been accesible to prehistoric cultures. Right?
Just a thought.
All valid thoughts, I do sometimes roll, sometimes not at all and split with a thumbnail, but find I get the best release by whacking. The 'citizen science' survey we did as part of this project invited people to use any method they liked to get to 'peeled' and there are a wide range of things people found they liked.
I've not found soaking helps, plus it relies on access to a bit if water you can lay the nettles in which isn't always convenient, plus, I wanted to be careful not to ret, and that can happen fast in summer. If it works better for you that way though, go ahead! Lastly I am experimenting with different stages of scraping, my stock of dried bast strips includes scraped, barely scraped and completely unscraped. You can start from dry completely unscraped, but it takes longer to get to clean fibres than if you spent a few seconds lightly scraping at the point of peeling.
It's entirely likely more than one method was used in prehistory, the plan is to send finished samples for comparison to the archaeological examples once done, maybe we'll get further suggestions then on things to explore!
These are great videos. How does it carbonize? (Can you drive off the volatiles and actually get something strong? I'd doubt it...but that's always an interesting question with fibers. ...And does it grow nanotubes...is it strong at the molecular level?)
I would be interested to see the results of the comparison study, to learn which method of cordage turned out to be the closest to the archaological samples. Could we get a link? I don't know how to find any more information about how things went on this subject.
Have you read the article by Gleba and Harris that's linked in my Splicing video? That talks more about the details of archaeological nettle thread.
@@SallyPointer I don't think i saw the splicing video. I'll go check it out, ty!
@@SallyPointer I have read that article now. But the point of my question was really to tap your familiarity with your knowledge of people/groups like yourself actually doing this, and the study/challenge you mentioned. Now that we've seen one way sewing cordage can be made I'd like to see how others approached it. Not to diss your attempt, just to get more ideas.
@@Marialla. over on the 'Nettles for Textiles' group on Facebook you'll find posts from other people who did this challenge too, and what they came up with. There isn't a single comparison study though, just lots of individual experiments.
Can you do anything with the roost/pithy bits or is it just compost?
Some people make paper with it, or save for kindling
Did you wax the cord before using it in your leather project?
Not something I've found necessary
I am curious, could you do the same process for flax when it is green.
Anyone who collects nettle without gloves is going to learn very quickly why gloves are needed. Lol.
Practice means it's possible to avoid almost all the stings
Sure. But until you get there. Yikes!
gnarly video, dedicated to your craft!
I’ll have to figure out where there’s nettles around me lol! Did you win the contest?
It's not a contest as such, just a challenge to see how long you can make yours. There's been some amazingly long threads posted on the Facebook page recently, really impressive work!
So basically 100 bee stings for a piece of string?
Could you ease processing by soaking them for a few days first, or would that break down the fiber? I’ve heard of that used for some plant fibers.
Lots of people do ret nettles, it's not the method I'm currently working with because my current research focus is prehistory and current evidence suggests they aren't retting at that point, but it's a perfectly good method which works really well and lots of people prefer retting their nettle first.
'5x speed, wheeeeee...'
I wonder if you could remove the leaves earlier andas the nettles are growing to create "nodeless" stems?
Interesting idea, but I think the nodes form as the leaves do, so by the time they are visible to remove the joint is already there. I suspect too the plant would be far less robust with fewer leaves and that might affect fibre quality. Would be an interesting comparison to try though!
@@SallyPointer I will set a reminder next spring to train some . My hope is they heal over when constantly rubbed off.
@@chickadeeacres3864 This is an interesting theory! I see no reason why people may not have tried to help nudge conditions in their favor towards longer spaces between nodes, fewer branches, etc. I hope you do try this experiment and report your results!
@@Marialla. they grow so darn fast I missed my chance last year LOL! I’m trying again this year
@@chickadeeacres3864any luck?
I tried to get some nettle stalks of my own a few days ago... They disintegrated into fluff when I tried scraping them; going to try again in another week or so.
Where are you based? In the UK the season is slowing down, so they are as mature now as they'll get. You need a really light tough for scraping, check you aren't pressing too hard and cutting through the fibres.
Sally Pointer I’m in Central B.C.... Maybe our season is a bit longer than yours? Also, it only just stopped raining long enough for me to harvest lol! Mother Nature seems to be drunk this year. :P I don’t have a really flexible knife like yours; I only have table knives.
@@luminalsaturn2 it's worth trying different knives, or even things like paint scrapers, it's definitely not about sharpness, if you think of it more as 'squeegee-ing' off the wet green parts, and not about pressing down in a cutting manner, perhaps that will help? Or, try peeling, then drying, and remove most of the bark by rubbing in the hands, that can work though it takes a bit of time
Sally Pointer I think I’ll try the peeling and drying... Mother Nature is giving us a break from rain, so I’ll be able to get some more stalks soon! :) Thanks for the feedback!
Would that piece hold up as fishing line?
Yes I think it would, it's really strong. I'll do some breaking strain tests on a range of nettle samples soon, but I can't break this easily by hand
Es ortiga.?
Yes
What do you do with it?
Sew with it, do fine braiding, whatever you want really
How many inches long is it? I live in the USA.LOL
Easy way to remember the conversion is that a 12 inch ruler is 30cm. We all stared at so many rulers at school that visualising in ruler lengths is generally pretty easy for most people.
Did your husband ever find out about his rolling pin?
Who knew?