Flax to Linen
I have mentioned before how much I love linen. I love the feel of the fabric in my hands and against my skin. I have linen sheets for my bed and more linen blouses than any other kind with the possible exception of t-shirts. Weaving with linen yarn is a bit more difficult than with cottolin, my happy kitchen towel yarn. Linen is not very forgiving. It has no elasticity and no memory so it won't go back to where it belongs if it gets out of place. It needs to be carefully tensioned on the loom because it won't even out as you weave. I guess you'd have to say its acts a bit prickly.
I'm working on another run of linen face cloths that will be ready for the fall sale in November. I put 12 yards of linen warp on the loom and since the face cloths are only 14-15" square that's a lot of face cloths. I just took the first dozen off the loom because the cloth beam was getting so big around I kept hitting it with my knees.
I'm particularly pleased with the face cloths I've woven so far because I've used some of my hand woven flax as weft.
I've also woven a couple of face cloths using kenaf as weft. Kenaf is a bast fiber similar to hemp and flax and is grown in China, India, Southeast Asia and to a lesser extent here in the US. The leaves are used as cattle feed and fiber is used for twine, rope and clothing grade cloth. It's a very hairy yarn and I think it will be great in a face cloth.
I will be cutting the face cloths apart and getting them washed and hemmed in the next few days.