#flax

[milkweedman]

Too sick to do pretty much anything but also bored as hell. Been spinning the southdown flax blend on my espinner cause why not, nobody has ordered any and I can make more if they did.

It's a very interesting spin. I spun a sample before I put it up for sale to make sure it wasn't awful, which it's not; but it is difficult. Not sure I would have been able to spin it before I learnt how to spin flax. You gotta keep an eye on both components as you work, making sure you're not leaving the southdown behind or letting the flax bunch up. It's easy once you are used to it, but still different.

The espinner I got working a little better by seating the drive band correctly. Still not a fan of the fact that I'm not directly in control of the speed... on a wheel or spindle I often want to slow down or stop but it's a pain on the espinner and it leads to uneven yarn. These things are weird.

Anyway. Dont know what I'll do with it but it's nice to spin again. Have been having trouble using my supported spindles bc of my shoulders. I know there's a way to lay down where you can spin supported without shoulder pain; the issue is I can't lay in one position for very long bc then everything else hurts. And of course supported is what i switched to after wheel spinning was too painful, which i got into because drop spindling was too painful. Can you tell how upset I am that spinning is being slowly taken from me. Haha. Anyway. Glad for the espinner in this regard.

[theroadtofairyland]

Just The Flax, Ma'am

Watercolor on Black Cotton Paper

2022, 25"x 33"

Blue Flax Flowers

Private Collection

[ye-olde-cider]

So I'm trying to make folk linen pants from sowing to sewing.

Second post (here's first)

It's been about 60 days since sowing (it's 22nd of June). It's looking so pretty and started blooming about 55th day. I've been watering it one or two wheelbarrows of every 2 weeks, which I thought would be too little but it's growing pretty good. It's still not that high (about over the knee) and I doubt it'll get much higher sadly. That means lower grade of fibers but whatever. It'll be fine.

Every now and again there are parts laying down and I've been seeing some hares running about so they probably hide in it tramping down the plants. But it gets up no problem so all good. Maybe next time I'll put up a little fence around it.

Also idk when should I harvest it bc all the info is about oil flax, not textile flax, and even then it's contradictory sometimes. But either way it's around 100-120th day, so we're still only halfway.

Next up I need to start thinking about scuthing it, and it requires some equipment. But it's easy enough to build on my own probably. It should be something like this flax-brake:

And then this kind of metal comb, which I'll make just by densly putting nails in a blank:

So yeah, that's the plans for the near future. Here's a bonus flax video if you stayed till the end ❤️

[fullcravings]

Perfect Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

[flame-shadow]

bonus version of one sketch from yesterday's commission, because bees can hold other bees!

[flax belongs to @luxhalcyonatro and lobelia belongs to @vulturereyy]

[fattributes]

Dark Chocolate and Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars

[balkanradfem]

Woman grows flax and makes linen from it!

(I was crying every time she complained about flax not growing in 3 months as it was expected, she planted it in late summer instead of early spring and expected it to grow in December T_T)

[sheepyhollows]

source

[flowerishness]

Linum usitatissimum (common flax)

This is not a plant

As I've said before, I like to have fun with free plant identification websites by testing them with artificial flowers, famous paintings etc. just to see what they 'think'. In the past, I've always got an answer even if their identification is what we humans would call a wild guess.

This week, I've been running Mrs. Flowerishness' tea cups through one such program and for the first time it replied, "This is not a plant". So far this website has identified all of the flowers on the tea cups correctly but, for some reason, this tea cup has been rejected. I think it looks a lot like Linum usitatissimum (common flax) to me. Common flax definitely is a plant (its a major agricultural crop) and, if you throw in a little artistic license, I think it's a pretty good likeness at that!

'Regency bone china', Barratt's of Staffordshire Ltd

[textless]

Garden flowers.  Cochise County, Arizona, April 2023.

[ksjanes]

Flax Flower

It’s believed that flax was first domesticated in the Stone Age by people in the Mediterranean region. This makes it among the first plants purposely grown by humans aside from food crops. It quickly spread across the world with the earliest establishment of trade routes throughout the Mediterranean and Europe.

[mcbadger]

I got to help process flax today with the swiss organization ZiehLein.

A neighbor of a family friend planted 20m² of flax this year and she asked me to help her process it.

We processed a bit more than this between the two of us.

And she let me take 5 of those things home with me.

[theroadtofairyland]

The Flax Are Wild

Watercolor on Black Cotton Paper

2023, 22"x 30"

Blue Flax Flowers

[wolfchanw]

I just felt the urge to show that my garden has more than *just* purple flowers!

[fullcravings]

Chocolate Dipped Sesame Oatmeal Bars

[zimcard-artblog]

Design, AU, and overall characters here belong to @afrothunderxx96

REALLY a huge fan of the corrupted knights design and overall the snippets of color swap versions of the CTYH cast, it really makes me wonder how the whole CTYH story would have been in that kind of setting.

The idea of Blixer being a Guardian of the artifact while his minions and lycan act likes subjects makes me think of the palace being this huge garden cause the minions are plant shaped! Guardian of the Garden.

Besides that, the corrupted knights really strikes my interest. For some reason I imagine corrupted Cider having this voice similar to Ghostfreak from the original Ben 10 series... that and he strikes as some kind of vampire/ghost with the cloak and all of that. Overall, I love their designs.