Maypoles and the Morris

V & A Museum photograph of the Betley window

Here's a painted glass window from Betley, Staffordshire (England) showing Morris dancers around a maypole that bears the message, A Mery May. The window dates c.1509 - yes, a bit later than the 14th century but, sorry, I simply couldn't resist this morning :-)

We see Robin Hood, Maid Marion in a golden crown (alias the May Queen), the Friar, the Obby Oss (hobby horse), the Pipe & Tabor player, and the Fool with his coxcomb hood and ass's ears - For only a fool would be King For A Day.

The original window is now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. A copy remains at Betley.

Spinning Nettles into Thread: stage four - SPINNING

In my last post - stage three: Preparation - I mentioned what Mrs. Grieve had said about the quality and length of nettle fibre

The length of Nettle fibre varies from ¾ to 2½ inches: all above one and three eighth inches is equal to the best Egyptian cotton. It can be dyed and bleached in the same way as cotton, and when mercerized is but slightly inferior to silk. It has been considered much superior to cotton for velvet and plush.

The fibre that I'd managed to harvest was quite a bit longer than this - about six inches on average. For spinning I used a fast top-whorl spindle weighing just over an ounce. I already knew that damp fingers helped bast fibre to spin so I tried that method, although it made the fibre feel a bit sticky (which again made me think that it had not retted properly). I also discovered that nettle responded best when spun with an "S twist". The thread just seemed to be stronger when spun that way, and I remembered that some of the stems I harvested had grown with a natural "S twist" to them.

Of course the combed fibre span much more easily than the tow, but both types made a stiff, greenish thread. After plying and skeining I decided to try and lighten the colour by boiling in soapy water for about thirty minutes. The thread spun from tow came out a dull greyish color. But the thread spun from combed fibre was almost pure white! It still felt a little too stiff though, so I softened it up by rubbing it between my hands, ending up with a very useable thread.

Photograph by C.J. Keith

Spun combed fibre at top of picture. Tow at bottom right. Softened thread at bottom left.

It was a great feeling to extract and spin nettle fibre and I really liked the resulting thread. I went on to ask myself this question: Could nettle thread be used to make comfortable clothing? The answer was, Yes. Most definitely.

Spinning Nettles into Thread: stage three - PROCESSING

In my last post (stage two – Retting) I spoke of accidentally finding the bast fibre in what I had thought was just the remains of ‘bark’ on the nettle stems. What I think happened was that the gummy substance attaching bast fibre to plant stems, did not completely dissolve.

The book Handspinning by Eliza Leadbetter (1983) says that the retting process “decomposes the adhesive substances that bind the fibres to each other and the woody portion of the stem.” So maybe a longer retting period was needed. Anyway, I made the choice to strip all the fibre off the stems by hand because I was eager to play with it. The job was tiresome and it made for sore fingers, so I ended up taking only enough to experiment with.

In flax production, the next stage would involve combing the bast with a big flax hackle. But my nettle bast was only about 6 inches long making that impossible. Besides, I don’t own a flax hackle. What to do? I looked around for what might help and ended up taking one of my wool cards and pulling the nettle bast through it piece by piece. This worked well and I ended up with some nicely combed nettle fibre and some nettle tow.

Using a wool card as a comb for the Nettle bast fibre

Photograph by C.J. Keith

Tow is the name given to what remains after bast is combed, and comprises of shorter fibres that do not lie parallel to one another. The colour of the nettle fibre was a very pale blonde-green and it smelled like new mown hay.

Although my combed fibre looked good, I did wonder why it wasn’t the same length as flax fibre. Fortunately I remembered a book called A Modern Herbal written in 1931 by Mrs. Grieve. In here she talks about nettle fibre, most specifically its quality and length. She says, ‘The length of Nettle fibre varies from ¾ to 2½ inches: all above one and three eighth inches is equal to the best Egyptian cotton. It can be dyed and bleached in the same way as cotton, and when mercerized is but slightly inferior to silk. It has been considered much superior to cotton for velvet and plush.’ After reading this I felt better about the fibre I had managed to extract from my plants.














In this photograph the combed Nettle fibre is on the right, and the Nettle tow (short fibres left over from combing) is on the left.
Photograph by C. J. Keith

Spinning Nettles into Thread: stage two – RETTING

Books can often over simplify a process, or else engender false ideas to the point that surprises occur when you come to deal with something ‘hands-on’. Take spinning for instance. That looks and sounds easy enough because all you are really doing is taking a bit of fluff and using a stick to help twirl it into a length of thread, right? Now go ahead and try it for yourself. You’ll soon see that the difference between theory and practice can be pretty vast. I banged right up against this sort of thing when I tried my hand at retting.

My nettles had been bundled and hung in the shade for two days so they were safe enough to handle, and I gladly set about stripping all the leaves and side shoots off the main stems. Bast fibre is what I needed to get out of these plants. Bast is the spinable fibre that runs along the stems of certain plants like flax, nettle and hemp. The longer the stems of the plants, the longer the length of fibre you will be able to collect; well, theoretically anyway.

Retting is the process used to release bast fibre from plant stalks. My information said that retting means using water to rot away unwanted plant material thus exposing the fibre for collection. It all sounded simple enough, and I even discovered a couple of different methods of retting; such as dew-retting, where you lay the plant stems on the ground and let each night’s dew gently do its work. Pools of water are commonly used for retting since stems can be soaked constantly to achieve faster results. (Talk about stinky medieval pollution at its best!)

Not wanting to pollute our local beaver ponds, I decided to go for the ‘dew-retting’ method and carefully spread the nettle stems on the ground within the shade of a tall conifer and our garden shed. Each morning I ran outside as soon as it was light to see what was happening, and discovered . . . well, not very much. It appeared we weren’t getting enough dew at night to bring about results, which meant I had to resort to hosing down the stems morning and evening to keep them damp. This went on for several weeks and all I saw happening was green healthy stems turning into a bundle of brown sticks. In my mind's eye I had seen the thin bark dissolving like magic and the stems yielding their fibre freely. All I would have to do was stop by and pick it up from the ground, right? No such luck.

Back to the books I went and realized that, in the flax process, retted stems need to be broken into pieces in order to release the fibre. This is accomplished by the use of a flax mallet, or a tool called a ‘flax break’. I didn’t have either so I chose a regular wooden mallet for the job. The hard nettle stems broke into pieces alright, but I still didn't see any fibre. All I saw were little bits of broken stick stuck together with something that looked like thin brown bark.

I felt let down but, after pulling all the bits of broken woody material from one piece of the bark, noticed something splaying out of the end that looked very much like fibre. I quickly worked this “bark” back and forth between my hands and there it appeared, like magic. Nettle fibre. The photograph below shows what I was working with, and you can see the fibres splaying out from the ends.

What appeared to be thin bark was actually nettle fibre.
Photograph by C. J. Keith

Spinning Nettles into Thread: stage one - HARVESTING

The weather this weekend was beautiful, we finally had some real spring-like days here in the Pacific Northwest - blue skies, sunshine, and temperatures over 68 degrees Fahrenheit. It was so lovely that I decided to sit out on the deck and do some spinning for a change, and that activity inspired me to write about some of the more ‘unusual’ fiber (fibre) used in Northern Europe and Britain in medieval times.







Spiders spin their silk into beautiful patterns.
Photograph by C. J. Keith


Since this journal is based on things medieval, the fibre I was spinning yesterday would not be appropriate to talk about here (it was Alpaca). However I have done some interesting experiments with fibre that I have extracted from regular old Stinging Nettles (Urtica dioica), and am thinking this story might be of interest to some of the ‘Textile-holics’ out there.

A while ago, during my first few years of spinning, I contemplated the idea of growing flax so that I could go through the whole experience of extracting the bast fibre, then processing and spinning it into thread (linen). But, whilst doing my research on flax, I came across a few references for the use of fibre from stinging nettles being made into cloth in the more northern countries like Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, and so on. Proof not only came from Danish graves, but from WWII Germany. This was way too interesting for me to pass up. I mean, how cool it would be to take stinging nettles (that grow everywhere here anyway) and turn them into a viable thread for cloth-making!

Okay, I know, you’re already saying, “This woman is a nutter” - but bear with me and I will show you how it all came together. Not only that, I’ll post some photographs of the process for you.

The first thing I did was choose a thick stand of nettles and keep my eye on them (Hey! Get away from those nettles, mister!). When they grew to 7 feet tall, I put on some thick leather work gloves and set about pulling them out of the ground. Yes, pulling them. I wanted the roots, you see, so that I could make a batch of yellow dye as well. Since these nettles were growing in their favourite type of soil – shaded, rich loam – they came up pretty easily with a firm tug. After carefully tying them into bundles, I carried them off home to hang outside for a couple of days. Why hang them, you ask? Well stinging nettles sting because they are covered in tiny hairs that are loaded with a fluid that severely irritates the skin on contact - believe me, you will know if you have been stung by nettles - but hanging the plants up for a couple of days causes the fluid to dry out and dissipate. So there you are. This completed the first part of my process, Harvesting.

A stand of stinging nettles (Urtica diotica)
Photograph by C. J. Keith 2009