I remember reading that nettle was widely used to make clothes way until the beginning of 1900 in Finland before cotton replaced it. Flax and wool was used to make everyday wear and nettle to make undergarment and Sunday wear for Church. Nettle was called the Silk of the North and European royals loved linen made from the finest nettle fibers. Nettle fibers are porous so it's warm but soft like Silk and it's naturally antimicrobial so perfect for undergarments and bed sheets. First evidence using nettle in Finland is from the iron age when people used it to make fishnets because it doesn't rot as easily as other natural fibers.
I have to say, I am shocked! Nettle underwear is just laughable to me, and yet, once I see fibers taken, I have to recognize, this a plant I need to understand more. I already know it is good to eat, and good for hair.
Very true about the rotting. It rets itself actually. Retting is the process of rotting on purpose the stock and pith etc and everything except the fibers. Doing this will free the fibers, it is much more easier than trying to work with it when green. You gotta let it die, then rot a bit. Too long and the fibers will be weak, too soon and the fibers wont be free.
Really wonderful info and Id love to find any books on those ancient textiles. I believe the Osage and other indigenous tribes here in the Central US did the same as nettle grows wild very well and was definitely seen in Appalachia and the Mid Atlantic areas - but this information has been lost. Im interested in researching if Nettle could be a good carbon offset and brownfield site remediater so any info is helpful if anyone has good book titles or websites to explore.
I learned once to process preprocess the fibers of nettles from my grandmother. You have to break the stems open like you do and the put them in a small stream weight down with stones. Over a few days/week (depending on the weather) the softer flesh will rot away. The fibers then are rolled and washed, then dried, combed and spun. My grandmother made underwear from it after the last world war. She said that you can dry the stocks and then break them but the water method will produce a better yarn.
@bina nocht I don't know which ivy you have pulled, however I don't think I should test my immune system if its poison ivy.. Grapes vines are very strong as they dry. That's why I was asking about weaving fibers. The grapevine are great wound into wreaths and sculptures of animals. I like your process.
A great demonstration of a complex subject. This is exactly where YT excels as a platform, detailed educational content from true experts that would never get seen in traditional broadcast media.
This reminds me of a fairy tale I read as a kid called The Wild Swans where some princes are turned into swans, and their sister breaks the spell by making them shirts out of stinging nettles. The story makes a lot more sense now.
I remember that story. I thought that part of the payment for the magic was the pain and effort of making clothing out of such a plant (I react strongly to stinging nettle). I imagined the shirts to be full of leaves like a shirt for Peter Pan. Now I know better. 😊They must have been lovely shirts!
When I was a child, I saw Maori women in New Zealand processing New Zealand Flax (Phorium tenax) fibres for cloak weaving. They used abalone or puppies shells to scrape the flax and also sharpened shells to cut sections in the outer coating (which curls when dried). This was how they make their “Piu piu“ skirts. Their cloaks are exquisite, are woven without a loom and the technology of how it is done has survived to this day, thanks to a small group of dedicated advocates.
That's interesting, they planted New Zealand Flax all over my city in California as a decorative plant, then when it got too tall they tried to use a weed whacker meant for grass to cut it down. I saw it afterwards, it was basically kind of shredded and not really cut, due to the strong fibers. It's been planted in thousands of places in my city and surrounding city from people's yards to parks to the street corner on Main Street, maybe I'll make a shirt. And tell other people to do that in stead of trying to mow it down.
Oo, that would have munted their mower! It gets all caught up around the rotating bits and is a bugger to remove. To cut harakeke, ( nz flax) you should... say a blessing first, then cut with a sharp knife at an angle from the middle ( so water is shed away to prevent rotting) , and always leave the three innermost leaves ( mum , dad and baby) to carry on growing. Don't eat or drink while cutting. Menstruating women should not cut flax. I'm not of Maori descent but that is how it was explained to me by a traditional weaver. I believe that weight for weight flax is stronger than steel.
This is exactly what I thought of as I watched her scrape the nettles with flint. The same technology, on the opposite side of the world, with different materials, arriving at the same result. Still practised today (as a craft, not out of necessity), here in Aotearoa 🇳🇿
You have taken my two passions - fiber arts and archaeology - and put them into a single UA-cam channel. Thank you UA-cam algorithms for suggesting these videos to me!!!
This is why we have pets. They help us keep perspective😊 I grow nettles for eating and making tea ... Now I can use the stems for something other than compost! Close ups were helpful and well done!
I miss those times with My Son .. Hes all grown up now ... Cherish this time and let the little sponge soak it all up . I did the same thing and introduced him to it i think around 2 yrs old and he was hooked. Got him books and everything i could so he could get it into his brain . Ancient History and World history Needs to be taught and taught Young, it will help them in the long run for more things than we could both come up with . Cheers .
I live in North Carolina, And study primitive arts under Doug Meyer, and have recently passed a personal goal of 1000 feet of Processed refined cordage. Recently discovered a patch of wood nettles, went to this demonstration and came away with some amazing results.
Wild fiber extraction and cordage is what I was investigating at about 15 years old in Massachusetts and Virginia. at 18 I joined the army and all my interests in early knowlage and skill was put into a shoe box way back on the top shelf. At 58 now I'm watching this lovely siren put it in my face. Ty
I live in massachusetts too, try looking for dead dry common milkweed. The stems are prerhetted after months of winter chill and the stem structure is similar to nettles. make sure you shake the seeds out for later. That way there's more next year.
Cordage is a naval term. Using it like this is akin to saying that "you are going to take the car for a walk" the same goes for lashing/s also naval term/s. This is because for centuries it was the sailor who you asked when you needed something secured the best with a rope, string or twine like substance. But, at this point there is no reason to keep using the wrong terms for the wrong things.
@@BBCTopgearfan then I guess survivalists are using the wrong term all over the world. ;P remember this isn't just naval history represented here. Still, it's interesting to hear.
@@BBCTopgearfan it’s simply wrong to say that cordage is an exclusively naval term. cord and rope are different. cordage can and does often refer to the strands braided together to create a rope or can stand alone. if you’re going to correct people, it’s really better to be right.
@@4968ace yes, simply put "survivalists" are wrong. See, when your mother (I'm assuming you had one) asked you as a kid if "all your friends were jumping off a cliff would you?" Well, wonder no longer. You would/are. I hope you are able to sleep soundly at night now without the self reflection this revelation into your physche should cause in a person with a minimum of 2 functioning braincells that occionanally bump into each other every third Tuesday, for coffee and gossip. As anything else would over tax your poor mental state and require you to have a "lay down" before you have a "come-apart"
The lowly Nettle is one of the greatest of plants. From food and drink to clothing it`s uses are so many and it is such a shame that so much has been forgotten and lost/discarded to "the convenience" of modern living. First of your videos I`ve seen (youtube actually showed up something of proper inters for once) I can assure you I will be watching a lot more.
Oh my goodness, I Love you for doing this! I'm always finding worked flint in my garden. i have wanted to make a nettle bag for a long time. When doing some gardening I wanted to cut through a stalk without getting up and going to the shed to get my clippers. I picked up a flat stone with and edge and it cut through perfectly. When I looked at it I realised it was worked flint, even with a knob to hold my finger against. Definitely a scraping and cutting tool. Then I noticed more and more worked flint everywhere. I live on the North Downs in Surrey, literally a flint mine!
I yearn for the days of an entire community of people sitting around creating textiles. We’ve lost so much and are so isolated now. I’d love to be a living history participant and experience these things.
Jente of the Mijn Wolden UA-cam channel took part in a community flax raising, spinning and weaving project, she made a video about it. So you might be able to find a group of fellow enthusiasts to work with to produce some textiles. The other alternative is to have a crafting afternoon with one or two friends. You don't have to work on the same craft but it's fun to see what other people do and you can have a good yarn. (Yarning, particularly in Australian Aboriginal English, also refers to talking and story telling.)
@@Badficwriter: Fair point but the workers probably had more ownership of their products and the way they produced them than is often the case in a factory. Doing stuff with friends and family isn't quite the same as doing stuff in a factory where you can be sacked at the whim of a manager or an owner. Although, once you are well and truly out of the hunting and gathering era and into early agriculture, there were probably some enslaved workers, as well as "free" workers. From what I've heard, that was definitely the case by the iron age.
Just happened across your video. I didn't know spinning nettles was a thing, but was instantly reminded of a fairy tale I read as a child (almost 70 years ago) in which a girl is forced to knit shirts out of stinging nettles found in a church yard in order to rescue her brothers from a spell in which they had been turned into swans. So I googled it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wild_Swans. So apparently textiles out of nettles were a thing during the time when fairy tales were being developed.
I was always a curious child. History in schools never taught me the life skills of before. Knowledge is powerful. Thank you for your videos! I now have the tools to teach my grandkids "historical knowledge" and give them a guide towards open thinking. God bless!
I’m so pleased to have seen this! I’ve seen Egyptian wall paintings of workers splicing flax end to end. I’ve never seen nettle prepared well enough to see it spliced end to end. Another question it could answer is why problems arise in identifying flax from nettle, because I’ve never seen nettle prepared so finely.(I know there are other ways of telling them apart!). I see now why Mary Queen of Scots preferred nettle fibre sheets for her bed...if the story is true!
@@SallyPointer I have shared your Story On Native Pages Run from USA.sure it was a Blessing To listen to you, If Hemp was allowed to make Pots Bags etc Today we would not be in Plastic mess in The Oceans,,, all the best.WELL SAID ..
@@BugiAnsari Thank you! Hemp does work extremely well, it's a fibre I often use when teaching as it's sometimes easier to get than flax or nettle, just depends what your local fibre sellers and producers concentrate on. It's nice to see so much more hemp clothing available these days too, definitely a step in the right direction.
@@SallyPointer I have seen it More Than Once Your way of Telling a Practical way of Life Is well appreciated, In Native Circles that I support,,All the best..
Nettle is extremely tough. I use it a lot in my bushcraft projects. Thankyou for this, it was interesting. BTW, the cordage method you use is also known as the Flemish Twist, its used a lot for bowstrings.
I’ve been making my first nettle cord today, I’ve really enjoyed it and my cats were fascinated. Despite the cats “help” I’m pleased with what I’ve made and am looking forward to watching more of these videos and trying more new things. Thank you Sally 😺
I watched a video on how to grow and process flax and could not believe how complex the whole thing was. I was disillusioned. Your presentation has encouraged me to consider taking this up again. Thank you.
If you like to experience the processing of flax into linnen in all its detail I recommend coming to Switzerland. Every year on the lastWendesday in September in the village of Zäziwil in the Emmental region of the Canton Berne there is a very nice little festivity with the name of "Brächete" ( meaning "Breaking") entirely dedicated to flax and its fibers. It is a very authentic traditional thing that is great fun, especially if you bring your children to this event. I vividly remember going to that event over 40 years ago as a ten year old. So if you got the opportunity see it yourself, it's open for everyone, you don't need a ticket or pay a fee, the local folks proudly wear the traditional clothing, there is typical Swiss folk music with dancing, and a market where you can buy food and all kind of nice stuff. You will learn every single step that is necessairy to turn a plant into a fine piece of garment. The importantthing about this is, that it is not a "one man/one woman"-job, but an endeavour in which an entire rural community is involved. I own very fine that bedsheets that were woven by hand by my grandmother and she also did the spinning of all the threads that were needed. This selfmade white linnen for bedsheets, underwear, shirts, etc were made by the girls and young women before marriage and of course it was a proud moment for the young bride and her parents, when her new husband was shown all the valuable, nice and very usefull pieces of fine linnen cloth, she had created with her own hands in hundreds and hundreds of hours of her own spare time.
@@kanonierable I would live to experience such a beautiful tradition. Wow. It’s wonderful that people practice this kind of communal tradition still. It gives me great hope for the future. Everything seems to be so heavily industrial now that I fear we will forget or forsake the simple ways.
Indeed!! I've got nettles in my side yard and want to try this Flax was wildly grown in Oregon through the 40s - then the processing plant at the farm associated work our star pen burned! I just heard that students from our agricultural college, OSU are working on growing flax again - they have a refurbished 'flax puller' (to get a long fingers as possible!) and using ecological methods 💠
the ahrd way makes a softer yarn, so people did not do this because they were stupid or had oodles of time to fill .. it is the differnce between a yarn for rope or bags or a yarn that can make teatowels or even underwear.
At last I understand how end-to-end splicing works. Thank you Sally, that’s so clear and helpful. Now I can see how the Egyptians not to mention the Must Farm people could work with such incredibly fine fibres. Really looking forward to seeing what a piece of cloth from this process is going to look and feel like.
I know a guy that makes handkerchiefs from nettles. He lays all the stems out to dry up. Then he soaks them all for three days, changing the water each day, to soften the woody cores and make it easier to remove them more cleanly.
also gives a softer yearn as the fibers are not damaged.. (think of hair that has been abused by being tied in pony tails when still wet, those dead spliced ends will be itchy in a fiber used for making cloth)
In harakeke fibre work the green cuticle is removed gently using a seashell in one fluid motion to stop the fibres breaking. I'm not familiar with separating pith from nettle fibre but I wonder if something similar is possible. Seashells can also be used for scraping without cutting fibres.
Those plants prob dont have the Branch / Separation areas if you will .. they go Horizontal to the plant and for a stopper and a break between the sections so it may now work "in one go" as other plants are . Hemp and Cannabis are like nettle too and harder to pith out as well .. I grown both and have experimented myself out of curiosity and i found that "Bruising" part, hitting it with w stick like she did in the begging is called Bruising .. i had to Really give it a good belting to flatten those horizontal bits to flatten out if you will and it made it a bit easier to remove and if at all pith there is . I found it to vary with the Size/Diameter of the branch or stalk would make a difference and seems theres a "perfect" time to harvest it to make string or rope . I made a rope . I may experiment after i harvest this year, after watching this ive got more "ideas" to experiment with . Cheers .
Never heard of harakeke before, thanks for the info. As a Malay speaker it's interesting to learn that the root word is related to pandan. Wikipedia: "The hara in the Māori name harakeke is a remnant of the Austronesian root *paŋudaN (via Proto-Oceanic *padran) surviving in related languages referring to pandanus plants with similar characteristics of sheathing leaves also used for weaving (like Pandanus tectorius, also known as hala in Hawaiian), as New Zealand was one of the only places where pandanus was not available.[6]"
@@megabigblur That makes sense, many plant names here come from similar plants in the pacific, and harakeke and pandanus have similar uses and leaf appearance.
I literally just yesterday learned how to make nettle fiber thread on a drop spindle, sitting at the park out in the sun, looking weird to all passersby. I swear, ma'am, you are a psychic. For some reason, it always seems to take me forever to process nettles, but it may very well be that I just don't yet have the time put in it.
I find it's worth not overthinking nettle, give it a good scrape, see how it looks, scrape a bit more if it needs it. Often people relatively new to it worry about if they are scraping the right bit, or enough, but it's a material that tends to be fairly obvious in practice. How lovely to sit in a park to spin it!
Good video; I learned more about nettle processing for fibers. Maybe you already know this technique to make cordage fast, maybe not, but when I was about 9 years old, my dad showed me how he could make strongish cordage as he twisted two strands simultaneously on his thigh. You hold the twisted cordage in the left hand and let it fall on the ground to the left as it forms. The right hand moves the two uncordaged twists apart like a Y on the right side of the thigh, and then rolls them both between palm and thigh, letting them counter twist on each other each time as you lift your left hand gently to let them counter rotate to lock. You keep rearranging the Y wiyh your right hand, in between the hand roll. The two fiber blobs upstream of the cordage rotate separately somewhat, so the two twists gain their proper same twists, to lock against each other. No spindle needed. I think it must be a quick way to make cordage that Indigenous Americans used and still use. My great grandfather was such. To be honest, a little saliva spit on the rolling hand once in a while helps optimize friction for twisting the two fibers simultaneously. Haha Someone else (like the kid learning) can manage the two clumps of wool or other kind of fiber, keeping them apart, stretching them into proper thread thickness for twisting, spicing them, etc. But your finger twisting, twist and cross, twist and cross, is very precise. Maybe thigh twisting is for bigger cordage.
Thigh twisting works very well, but I generally teach beginners to just use fingers because it's often hard to get thigh rolling to work over modern trousers, and it's faster to show the mechanics of how the twist and ply construction develops when they can see the strands in action. Thigh rolling is great for more large amounts certainly, but best when you can sit quietly to work, and I'm usually teaching in a crowd to lots of people at once 😁
@@SallyPointer do you have a video demonstrating this thigh twisting mentioned above? I'm more of a visual learner and though I'm going to try yours first, I'd love to know how to work with thicker cordage as well. I'm brand new to this but have always wanted to learn, so thank you for this video!
Spit has provided much usefulness thruout history ( I'm NOT talking about spitting on someone to debase them) I lick the lens on my glasses to clean them because I have very oily skin. Cuts right thru the fingerprints.
This is fascinating! I was volunteering at my daughter's pre-school and the kids kept collecting long leaves (looked somewhere between a day lilly and a blade of grass) and bringing them to each other and the teachers and me in bouquets. I was bored out of my skull and decided to try and make a basket out of it by first braiding up some leaves and adding in a new one every time it got hard to work with and got a few lengths and was able to make a basket about the size of a sparrow's nest that fell apart as soon as the children noticed it. Nice to know I was on the right track!
Y'know, I was kinda wondering how early humans first learned to make textiles at all - how would you know that this plant could be woven together to tie things up - but you comment makes me think it may just have been some Neanderthal was bored one day and started just twisting grasses in their hands!
@@Rachel-fi4sc quite possibly. I'd read about making cordage but didn't have ready access to any of the plants that were suggested. While picking some herbs thought hmm that lemon grass is rather fibrous. And adapted what I'd read to the lemon grass. Since then I've used them to make several rather nice bracelets
You remind me, in the way you speak, how you teach, and your enthusiasm for your craft & subject, of some of my SCA friends (Society for Creative Anachronism, medieval society). Especially some of my friends up in British Columbia, who have a similar lilt as they showed me all the neat things they've learned to do with their own fiber arts explorations. With the pandemic making it impossible to go visit them, you've unexpectedly given me a touch of my friends, whom I miss dearly. It was just like being in their home, going over the steps for processing the flax linen my friends were processing for spinning. Thank you very much for evoking that good memory!
Hello from Indiana, USA. I have been a professional Spinner for 40+ years. In days gone by I would teach/demonstrate spinning at Historical American events as well as at American Pioneer and Revolutionary era villages. Also went to schools to teach and demonstrate. I appreciate your channel and am glad to support you thru subscribing 😃. All my children (I've been Blessed to have 6 sons then a daughter in 7 years, one each year 😍) learned to spin very well🤩. Blessings
Here in California, we do have nettle, but I don't know where to find it, so I've used blackberry fiber. The preparation is virtually identical. Best to harvest in mid-late spring when the new canes are firming up but not yet dry and hard.
You are truly opening my eyes, Sally. I had done most of my research on later, medieval age weaving and clothing, but this series of earlier work methods has really gotten my juices going. I am starting to look at my raspberry canes differently, and the twinning process is much more interesting than I thought. I know your Masters is taking a lot of your time, but I so hope that you continue to make videos as you can. Your teaching methods are so smooth and understandable that even a neophyte like me can understand and duplicate what you demo. I very much appreciate the work you do to make the videos and demo to the public all this great material.
There are youtube videos of Japanese splicing techniques where they take banana leaf fibers and actually knot the fibers together. I came across them while trying to learn about early Japanese textiles.
This is such a huge help to me as a writer. Getting to see the process, hearing you talk through it and seeing the ways nettle and plants would be processed without drop spindles or modern tools. Thank you!
Another really interesting video, thank you. You are right though, Sally, I couldn't get my head around the end to end splicing method just by reading about it. Seeing both methods on paper, they look practically the same but actually watching it being done has made the differences in the methods very clear. I can't wait for the next instalment.
Maybe most of you already know this, but this video inspired me to look up other plant fibers, and I found that the cloth ramie is made from Boehmeria nivea, aka China grass, *_a plant in the nettle family_* that grows in China. Another variety called green ramie or rhea grows in Malaysia and is also used for cloth fibers.
as someone who weaves loads of friendship bracelets and adores repetitive actions, im certain id be good at this. i need to run out to a park and try to find some nettle and give this a shot! it'll be a fun failure should i not succeed p.s. your cat is adorable and i love that you gave him a fascinator! im glad us cat moms are all the same 😂
Oh my goodness! I just have to thank you again! I've been spinning and weaving in rural Iowa for 45 years ( inadvertently growing loads of stinging nettle) and I never dreamed if using it for anything but feed for us and our critters!
I remember the story of the princess who made cloaks of nettle fir her 6 swan enchanted brothers- and since anyone who unwittingly put their hand into a nettle plant knows the ongoing agony of the blisters ...Ellis that was love for you. We always harvested in spring as a delicious vegetable and had nettle tea... thank you for this interesting program.
Thank you so much for uploading this, how lucky we are to have such amazing resources available to us, and free of charge too. I’ve recently finished my undergraduate degree in archaeology, and would love to get into experimental archaeology as you do. Brilliant stuff, and thanks too for linking the paper. All the best!
The ingenuity of ancient humans will never cease to amaze me. So many foods, materials, etc. that ARE useful if you're very careful, breed and/or process them in a very certain way, from plants and animals that start off seeming useless or sometimes even dangerous. Case in point: this. "Ow! That plant just stung me!" (pause) "...I wonder if I can wear it..." (Of course there were steps in between that; I'm just speeding it up for humourous effect. :P)
Thank you soo much for this! You are a very good teacher, not talking all around the topic but getting straight to it, being both aware of the demands of technique and archaeological finds for information. I will certainly try to reproduce this. 🙂
Thx so much for the video. My grandfather thought me the continus method as a kid (we made cordage for the midsummer pole, the leafs and "green stuff" went into a nettle soup and the fibers dryed by the fire) there are no flint in Northern parts of Sweden (we were outside the town of Älvsbyn) so we cracked river stones to use as scrapers and frech Birch bark as a foundation to work on. He talked about weaving with the stuff but using the second method of non continuous splicing you showed (and using a spindle) but was firm on one thing and that was that that the splicing was butt to tip and the fold was against the thiner fiber or it could come lose when spinning it into yarn. And if the cordage was to be saved or if you made a basket of the material you should smoke it using Juniper branches.
@@LynxSouth sorry for a late answer, I know that one reason was to preserv the material from insects and mold but I faintly remember that it should help the strength of the fibers. "A winter weave that rots in summer or a rope that snaps in (because of) frost makes no maiden happy but makes for a good excuse"- is the qoute I remember
Thank you for such detailed visual instructions. I've a nettle patch in the back that grows to 2 meters in height, so it really does beg to be processed into fiber. I tried a couple years ago, following the process for flax, which wasn't ideal. With your instructions, I have the heart to try again. Thank you. I'll wait until the plants have finished their breeding though.
I remember reading a fairy tale about this little princess who has to make shirts from nettles that she gather in order to save her 6 brothers who were turned into swans.
In the Oseberg mound, were the most iconic Scandinavian viking ship was found, they also found a lot of textiles. The main part is woven tapestries and other woven fabrics, mainly of wool, but also of silk, linen, hemp and nettles ..
How fantastic... We can now use the whole Nettle plant. Learning to use the leaves and flowers for medicinal uses, and now the fibers as well for textiles. I love this... Thank you for sharing your video with all of us. Many Blessings to you always
Fascinating and clarifying, as always - thank you so much! Also for including the link to the paper, which I'll start reading asap. Athena, goddess of weaving and home crafts, is generally supposed to have an owl as her animal representative, but, based on their involvement with fabric arts, clearly the kitty cat is Athena's actual animal.
Tesla is soooo cute 💕💕, I've only recently tripped over your site but have subscribed 👍, I'm on the bushcraft side of things so the cordage of different materials is not a problem but it is good to see how people do things differently. What I am loving about your presentions is the further uses of certain natural fibres, I will never use them for weaving, but it is good knowledge knowing how they were used in other ways, Thankyou for keeping history alive and not just in books. 👍👍❤☕, Nige.
Thank you for sharing your experimentation with nettle fibers. I have a passing interest in how our ancestors improved their lives with the natural items they found around them.
Always wandered about this subject on flax in prehistoric times....that was a great demonstration..also good survival knowledge...but nothing like doing it yourself.
Hilarious with the kitty and his nettle threads! So informative and interesting to see cordage and splicing methods and thread making. So wonderful, thankyou! 🌿
Aborininal friend shared splitting the nettle stalk, soaking and braiding it. Next day was dry and shrunk tight and super strong. They would create fish nets from it.
Sally- Patrick here. I had no idea your work was here! I'm stoked I found your bonnet patterns and now this! You were next after a video on hand baled hay. This is tomorrow's AM break
This was a great video. very informative. It's fantastic to see how many views it has. It makes me happy to know so many others are interested in the history of fiber crafts.
Ooh you remind me that father remembers his mother and other women gathering Stinging nettles to make cloth. They used to ferment it for a while in water, then clean out the soft material and then process it similarly to linen! And that's early to mid 20th century in Rural Europe.
This method of cordage is so good for making delicate strands but my gods is it killer on your hands! Wonderful video, especially the info on the flint scrapers. Thank you!
Gracias - maravilloso trabajo - las ortigas, nacen en mi casa todo el tiempo - solo las utilizaba como fertilizante en purín - ahora le voy a dar otra utilidad - Saludos desde Argentina
I've been fascinated with this video ever since I saw it I have picked thorns and had them sitting around for months and finally shaved them down last week started making rope to find them together there are no other videos about this and I think it's pretty cool.❤
This is fascinating! I can’t wait to see what you make with it. I subscribed to find out. And thank you so much for saying that you are uncertain exactly how it was done, but trial and error tells you this is probably how it was done. Way too many scientists/researchers have too big of an ego for that simple statement. It makes me feel that I can trust your judgement.🐝🤗❤️
We can never be certain with prehistory, but trying to link the current evidence together into something plausible that we can then explore further is always good starting point.
@@SallyPointer You do it brilliantly! I was really impressed with how you “dressed” your fibers. When I see someone recreate something our ancient ancestors did, I always wonder how on Earth they discovered it in the first place.🐝🤗❤️
That's a good kitty. Also, thanks for the lecture, I never knew you could use nettles like this. I'll keep it in mind to save the stems if I ever get a bunch to make nettle soupe from the leaves.
When making cordage I use a hybrid of the two splicing methods you showed. I generally splice in one side at a time, but if I find fibers on both sides of the ply are ending at roughly the same time then I'll use the second method you showed where I lie the center of the new fiber across the ply and extend both sides at the same time. (I actually learned the second splicing method from one of your earlier videos, so cheers for that.)
Perfect! Everyone finds a way that works for them, that's the beauty of this type of work, and so fascinating from the perspective of an archaeologist too
Liked this video because of the lovely CAT!🥰😻And of course, Sally's profound knowledge and insistence on the prehistoric textile technique! Thank you for your sharing!This is my first time watching Sally Pointer, and found it very interesting on Sally's using of flints stones to shape and form the strings.
My brain cannot process how she stripped the stems with her bare hands and says it is “safe as long as you’re careful”! I have harvested and dried stinging nettles and almost always get brushed somewhere I thought was covered with long sleeves and leather gloves and the effects last for *hours*. This video though is fascinating and I’d love to give it a try! I’ve done wool processing and spinning and do own a drop spindle. Not sure my aged fingers will hold up to the splicing technique but I’ll try that too. Thanks!
Lamium album is a nettle that doesn’t sting, it has white flowers instead of the stingy versions purple flowers, I expect that would be a nice alternative if you find it.
I just stumbled across your video. It's so wholesome and informative! Thank you for making it! This was the first, but it won't have been the last of your videos I watch!
Great video, thank you! I know they arent historically used but havd you heard of anyone using japanese purple jewelweed or the flower stalks from lupins? Ive cleaned some up a bit and they are now drying. Both are hard to pull and break, about as strong as nettels and the jewelweed is a pink color while the lupins look very white and a bit shiny even dried.
@@Susweca5569 I found that they were brittle after I dried them unfortunately. I couldn't card them, but maybe they could be processed differently? I didn't Rhett them at all. But I also found nettles to be brittle too. Maybe I have to process them to fibers before they dry out and the fibers can be spun. Anyway it's really abundant and beautiful shiny, almost pearly fiber
What an interesting and informative video. You went over several techniques that I've never tried, yet. Looking forward for the next videos on nettle fiber. Now I need to find a nettle patch.
This is my first time seeing anything like this, and I am amazed! And hooked! 😊 Your kind teaching style and patience is evident throughout the video. Thank you for sharing this! 🙏❤️
Tried something similar with yucca a number of years ago while preparing a short talk in ethnobotany for my MA Anthropology. Like you I used a lithic scraper, but now wonder from watching some basket makers if soaking in water didn’t get used during some periods for even short lengths of time. BTW, my talk intimidated my classmates 😂, but I included food.
The end to end splicing bit was fascinating for me, as that is how I was taught to splice my roving/yarn together for working by my grandmother when she was teaching me to spin and crochet. I didn't realize the technique was as old as that.
Thank you for this video. I am looking into using nettle fiber to make textiles. But first: let me have a look at your other videos - they seem to be all very interesting for me.
We can use the nettles. We can eat nettles. We can make clothes with nettles. There is a lot of iron, a lot of vitamins, a lot of protein, a lot of vitamins in the nettles.
Thank you Sally for this very informative video! It has brought up some happy memories working with the inner cambium of western red cedar (& rarely, yellow cedar which grows near the ocean). Feeling hopeful that this winter will see some time for creativity.🤞 Much appreciation for your extensive knowledge & experience that you've graciously shared in the videos you've uploaded to UA-cam.
You can also extract fiber from pineapple leaves by scraping and splicing, here in Philippines I think it's a similar process but of course using much modern technology 😊
I am impressed! I was thinking, Oh, I will do this and make a dress, then I thought, I will make a bag, then I thought, I will make a bracelet..... lol, a lot of work.... Also, dont throw the leaves away, this plant is good to eat, and good for hair rinse and probably lots of other things too!
a trick i use when end-to-end splicing wool (aka spit splicing) is to do something similar to what's known as a "russian join" - fold both yarns so that there's a loop on both ends wrapped around the other one and twist each end them each back against their parent strand rather than forward against the next strand. Not sure if that would have any applicability here but it makes for a quite sturdy join with wool that's more resistant to forces tugging on either end, from my experience.
Oh my goodness! I never imagined anything useful being done with stinging nettle! Fascinating!! This is so so interesting! Thank you very much! Just fascinating!! Bless you! Francis
Stinging nettles have all sort of uses. Tea, medicinal, it is a great fertiliser. The seeds are particularly nutritious as are the flowers. I make a wonderful patty with sweet potato, nettle and ginger.
I remember reading that nettle was widely used to make clothes way until the beginning of 1900 in Finland before cotton replaced it. Flax and wool was used to make everyday wear and nettle to make undergarment and Sunday wear for Church. Nettle was called the Silk of the North and European royals loved linen made from the finest nettle fibers. Nettle fibers are porous so it's warm but soft like Silk and it's naturally antimicrobial so perfect for undergarments and bed sheets. First evidence using nettle in Finland is from the iron age when people used it to make fishnets because it doesn't rot as easily as other natural fibers.
Amazing!!!!!! And yes I know how to spin too....both on spindle and wheel.
I have to say, I am shocked! Nettle underwear is just laughable to me, and yet, once I see fibers taken, I have to recognize, this a plant I need to understand more. I already know it is good to eat, and good for hair.
Very true about the rotting. It rets itself actually. Retting is the process of rotting on purpose the stock and pith etc and everything except the fibers. Doing this will free the fibers, it is much more easier than trying to work with it when green. You gotta let it die, then rot a bit. Too long and the fibers will be weak, too soon and the fibers wont be free.
Wow, I'd never heard that before about nettle being considered a fine fiber. Thanks, for sharing! I need to learn more about this fiber as well.
Really wonderful info and Id love to find any books on those ancient textiles. I believe the Osage and other indigenous tribes here in the Central US did the same as nettle grows wild very well and was definitely seen in Appalachia and the Mid Atlantic areas - but this information has been lost. Im interested in researching if Nettle could be a good carbon offset and brownfield site remediater so any info is helpful if anyone has good book titles or websites to explore.
I learned once to process preprocess the fibers of nettles from my grandmother. You have to break the stems open like you do and the put them in a small stream weight down with stones. Over a few days/week (depending on the weather) the softer flesh will rot away. The fibers then are rolled and washed, then dried, combed and spun. My grandmother made underwear from it after the last world war. She said that you can dry the stocks and then break them but the water method will produce a better yarn.
The English name for the process is 'retting',
So interesting! Thank you. Would be so cool to try that out sometime. My first time watching finer use of nettles.
Thats usually how they would process regular linnen. I can see how the process would work well for nettfle fibres as well :)
Have you ever preprocessed grapevines?
@bina nocht I don't know which ivy you have pulled, however I don't think I should test my immune system if its poison ivy..
Grapes vines are very strong as they dry.
That's why I was asking about weaving fibers.
The grapevine are great wound into wreaths and sculptures of animals.
I like your process.
A great demonstration of a complex subject. This is exactly where YT excels as a platform, detailed educational content from true experts that would never get seen in traditional broadcast media.
This reminds me of a fairy tale I read as a kid called The Wild Swans where some princes are turned into swans, and their sister breaks the spell by making them shirts out of stinging nettles. The story makes a lot more sense now.
I remember that story. I thought that part of the payment for the magic was the pain and effort of making clothing out of such a plant (I react strongly to stinging nettle). I imagined the shirts to be full of leaves like a shirt for Peter Pan. Now I know better. 😊They must have been lovely shirts!
The comment just under this one is also about that story lol. What a coincidence
Was it the story where she wasn't allowed to speak during the entire process as well?
It was the first thing that came to mind as well and shortly afterwards I remembered how brutal it was.
I love that story. I still have the book from when I was young. I always wanted to name a daughter Elise
She showed a left handed example!! You have no idea how hard it is to comprehend right handed tutorials sometimes.
the cat was the perfect ending. Thank you so much for the video. every once in a while i think about this and come back to watch it again
When I was a child, I saw Maori women in New Zealand processing New Zealand Flax (Phorium tenax) fibres for cloak weaving. They used abalone or puppies shells to scrape the flax and also sharpened shells to cut sections in the outer coating (which curls when dried). This was how they make their “Piu piu“ skirts. Their cloaks are exquisite, are woven without a loom and the technology of how it is done has survived to this day, thanks to a small group of dedicated advocates.
Pippi shells not puppies shells. Grrr autocorrect...
Phormium tenax is the name of the flax ..
That's interesting, they planted New Zealand Flax all over my city in California as a decorative plant, then when it got too tall they tried to use a weed whacker meant for grass to cut it down. I saw it afterwards, it was basically kind of shredded and not really cut, due to the strong fibers. It's been planted in thousands of places in my city and surrounding city from people's yards to parks to the street corner on Main Street, maybe I'll make a shirt. And tell other people to do that in stead of trying to mow it down.
Oo, that would have munted their mower! It gets all caught up around the rotating bits and is a bugger to remove. To cut harakeke, ( nz flax) you should... say a blessing first, then cut with a sharp knife at an angle from the middle ( so water is shed away to prevent rotting) , and always leave the three innermost leaves ( mum , dad and baby) to carry on growing. Don't eat or drink while cutting. Menstruating women should not cut flax. I'm not of Maori descent but that is how it was explained to me by a traditional weaver.
I believe that weight for weight flax is stronger than steel.
This is exactly what I thought of as I watched her scrape the nettles with flint. The same technology, on the opposite side of the world, with different materials, arriving at the same result. Still practised today (as a craft, not out of necessity), here in Aotearoa 🇳🇿
My grandma said her granny made them clothes from nettle during the war, thanks for showing me how it's done!
You have taken my two passions - fiber arts and archaeology - and put them into a single UA-cam channel. Thank you UA-cam algorithms for suggesting these videos to me!!!
This is why we have pets. They help us keep perspective😊
I grow nettles for eating and making tea ... Now I can use the stems for something other than compost! Close ups were helpful and well done!
Fascinating! I put this on for my sewing fanatic 6 year old who is learning ancient history.
I miss those times with My Son .. Hes all grown up now ... Cherish this time and let the little sponge soak it all up . I did the same thing and introduced him to it i think around 2 yrs old and he was hooked. Got him books and everything i could so he could get it into his brain . Ancient History and World history Needs to be taught and taught Young, it will help them in the long run for more things than we could both come up with . Cheers .
These comments gave me a big smile. You sound like Wonderful parents
What a fortunate six-year-old!
I live in North Carolina, And study primitive arts under Doug Meyer, and have recently passed a personal goal of 1000 feet of Processed refined cordage. Recently discovered a patch of wood nettles, went to this demonstration and came away with some amazing results.
Wild fiber extraction and cordage is what I was investigating at about 15 years old in Massachusetts and Virginia. at 18 I joined the army and all my interests in early knowlage and skill was put into a shoe box way back on the top shelf. At 58 now I'm watching this lovely siren put it in my face. Ty
I live in massachusetts too, try looking for dead dry common milkweed. The stems are prerhetted after months of winter chill and the stem structure is similar to nettles. make sure you shake the seeds out for later. That way there's more next year.
Cordage is a naval term. Using it like this is akin to saying that "you are going to take the car for a walk" the same goes for lashing/s also naval term/s.
This is because for centuries it was the sailor who you asked when you needed something secured the best with a rope, string or twine like substance. But, at this point there is no reason to keep using the wrong terms for the wrong things.
@@BBCTopgearfan then I guess survivalists are using the wrong term all over the world. ;P remember this isn't just naval history represented here. Still, it's interesting to hear.
@@BBCTopgearfan it’s simply wrong to say that cordage is an exclusively naval term. cord and rope are different. cordage can and does often refer to the strands braided together to create a rope or can stand alone. if you’re going to correct people, it’s really better to be right.
@@4968ace yes, simply put "survivalists" are wrong. See, when your mother (I'm assuming you had one) asked you as a kid if "all your friends were jumping off a cliff would you?" Well, wonder no longer. You would/are. I hope you are able to sleep soundly at night now without the self reflection this revelation into your physche should cause in a person with a minimum of 2 functioning braincells that occionanally bump into each other every third Tuesday, for coffee and gossip. As anything else would over tax your poor mental state and require you to have a "lay down" before you have a "come-apart"
Brilliant! The amount of sophistication, ingenuity and labor that went into the creation of early textiles was an impressive achievement.
The lowly Nettle is one of the greatest of plants. From food and drink to clothing it`s uses are so many and it is such a shame that so much has been forgotten and lost/discarded to "the convenience" of modern living. First of your videos I`ve seen (youtube actually showed up something of proper inters for once) I can assure you I will be watching a lot more.
I planted them into my garden for all this purposes.
As kid i hated them, now i like them.
Oh my goodness, I Love you for doing this! I'm always finding worked flint in my garden. i have wanted to make a nettle bag for a long time. When doing some gardening I wanted to cut through a stalk without getting up and going to the shed to get my clippers. I picked up a flat stone with and edge and it cut through perfectly. When I looked at it I realised it was worked flint, even with a knob to hold my finger against. Definitely a scraping and cutting tool. Then I noticed more and more worked flint everywhere. I live on the North Downs in Surrey, literally a flint mine!
Hello from West Sussex :) I can confirm the South Downs are also full of worked flint!
I yearn for the days of an entire community of people sitting around creating textiles. We’ve lost so much and are so isolated now. I’d love to be a living history participant and experience these things.
In a way, you are now part of such a community! Separated geographically, but united by You Tube.
It wouldn't be that different from factory work. When you had no other way to get them, making textiles was serious business, not a luxury hobby.
Jente of the Mijn Wolden UA-cam channel took part in a community flax raising, spinning and weaving project, she made a video about it. So you might be able to find a group of fellow enthusiasts to work with to produce some textiles.
The other alternative is to have a crafting afternoon with one or two friends. You don't have to work on the same craft but it's fun to see what other people do and you can have a good yarn. (Yarning, particularly in Australian Aboriginal English, also refers to talking and story telling.)
@@Badficwriter: Fair point but the workers probably had more ownership of their products and the way they produced them than is often the case in a factory. Doing stuff with friends and family isn't quite the same as doing stuff in a factory where you can be sacked at the whim of a manager or an owner.
Although, once you are well and truly out of the hunting and gathering era and into early agriculture, there were probably some enslaved workers, as well as "free" workers. From what I've heard, that was definitely the case by the iron age.
Crafting is indeed a slippery slope. Last month, I picked up a cute cheap sewing kit and decided to learn simple work. 😝
Just happened across your video. I didn't know spinning nettles was a thing, but was instantly reminded of a fairy tale I read as a child (almost 70 years ago) in which a girl is forced to knit shirts out of stinging nettles found in a church yard in order to rescue her brothers from a spell in which they had been turned into swans. So I googled it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wild_Swans. So apparently textiles out of nettles were a thing during the time when fairy tales were being developed.
Norma Cox, just came across Sally's video and your comment. I'd totally forgotten about the fairytale which you now reminded me of...
I also remember that one!
When the video appeared on my feed, that was the first thing I thought.
Never heard of it, but enjoyed it. Thank you for sharing.
@Susan Miller He shows up in the world of dreams in the Sandman graphic series by Neil Gaiman, as an old man with a swan's wing for an arm. ;-)
I was always a curious child. History in schools never taught me the life skills of before. Knowledge is powerful. Thank you for your videos! I now have the tools to teach my grandkids "historical knowledge" and give them a guide towards open thinking. God bless!
I have no idea why this was recommended to me, but im very glad it was, this is quite fascinating for me
I’m so pleased to have seen this! I’ve seen Egyptian wall paintings of workers splicing flax end to end. I’ve never seen nettle prepared well enough to see it spliced end to end. Another question it could answer is why problems arise in identifying flax from nettle, because I’ve never seen nettle prepared so finely.(I know there are other ways of telling them apart!). I see now why Mary Queen of Scots preferred nettle fibre sheets for her bed...if the story is true!
I always loved that story about Mary too, would be lovely if it was true!
@@SallyPointer I have shared your Story On Native Pages Run from USA.sure it was a Blessing To listen to you, If Hemp was allowed to make Pots Bags etc Today we would not be in Plastic mess in The Oceans,,, all the best.WELL SAID ..
@@BugiAnsari Thank you! Hemp does work extremely well, it's a fibre I often use when teaching as it's sometimes easier to get than flax or nettle, just depends what your local fibre sellers and producers concentrate on. It's nice to see so much more hemp clothing available these days too, definitely a step in the right direction.
@@SallyPointer I have seen it More Than Once Your way of Telling a Practical way of Life Is well appreciated, In Native Circles that I support,,All the best..
@@SallyPointer Kind of you to Reply. thanks..
Nettle is extremely tough. I use it a lot in my bushcraft projects. Thankyou for this, it was interesting.
BTW, the cordage method you use is also known as the Flemish Twist, its used a lot for bowstrings.
I’ve been making my first nettle cord today, I’ve really enjoyed it and my cats were fascinated. Despite the cats “help” I’m pleased with what I’ve made and am looking forward to watching more of these videos and trying more new things. Thank you Sally 😺
I'm so pleased you and your cattie supervisors had fun!
Welllll. . . . .The feline view of all this twisting is that it SHOULD be WOOL, but the result is close enough for playing with anyway ! LOL 🙂
I watched a video on how to grow and process flax and could not believe how complex the whole thing was. I was disillusioned. Your presentation has encouraged me to consider taking this up again. Thank you.
If you like to experience the processing of flax into linnen in all its detail I recommend coming to Switzerland. Every year on the lastWendesday in September in the village of Zäziwil in the Emmental region of the Canton Berne there is a very nice little festivity with the name of "Brächete" ( meaning "Breaking") entirely dedicated to flax and its fibers. It is a very authentic traditional thing that is great fun, especially if you bring your children to this event. I vividly remember going to that event over 40 years ago as a ten year old. So if you got the opportunity see it yourself, it's open for everyone, you don't need a ticket or pay a fee, the local folks proudly wear the traditional clothing, there is typical Swiss folk music with dancing, and a market where you can buy food and all kind of nice stuff.
You will learn every single step that is necessairy to turn a plant into a fine piece of garment. The importantthing about this is, that it is not a "one man/one woman"-job, but an endeavour in which an entire rural community is involved. I own very fine that bedsheets that were woven by hand by my grandmother and she also did the spinning of all the threads that were needed. This selfmade white linnen for bedsheets, underwear, shirts, etc were made by the girls and young women before marriage and of course it was a proud moment for the young bride and her parents, when her new husband was shown all the valuable, nice and very usefull pieces of fine linnen cloth, she had created with her own hands in hundreds and hundreds of hours of her own spare time.
@@kanonierable thank you for sharing. I would love to come visit this festival one day.
@@kanonierable I would live to experience such a beautiful tradition. Wow. It’s wonderful that people practice this kind of communal tradition still. It gives me great hope for the future. Everything seems to be so heavily industrial now that I fear we will forget or forsake the simple ways.
Indeed!!
I've got nettles in my side yard and want to try this
Flax was wildly grown in Oregon through the 40s - then the processing plant at the farm associated work our star pen burned!
I just heard that students from our agricultural college, OSU are working on growing flax again - they have a refurbished 'flax puller' (to get a long fingers as possible!) and using ecological methods 💠
the ahrd way makes a softer yarn, so people did not do this because they were stupid or had oodles of time to fill
.. it is the differnce between a yarn for rope or bags
or a yarn that can make teatowels or even underwear.
I have no idea why this was recommended to me, but I watched the whole thing, and it was great. 👍
At last I understand how end-to-end splicing works. Thank you Sally, that’s so clear and helpful. Now I can see how the Egyptians not to mention the Must Farm people could work with such incredibly fine fibres. Really looking forward to seeing what a piece of cloth from this process is going to look and feel like.
Thank you! Must Farm is such an inspiration, can't wait for it to be fully published!
@@SallyPointerAbsolutely!
I know a guy that makes handkerchiefs from nettles. He lays all the stems out to dry up. Then he soaks them all for three days, changing the water each day, to soften the woody cores and make it easier to remove them more cleanly.
also gives a softer yearn as the fibers are not damaged.. (think of hair that has been abused by being tied in pony tails when still wet, those dead spliced ends will be itchy in a fiber used for making cloth)
In harakeke fibre work the green cuticle is removed gently using a seashell in one fluid motion to stop the fibres breaking. I'm not familiar with separating pith from nettle fibre but I wonder if something similar is possible.
Seashells can also be used for scraping without cutting fibres.
Those plants prob dont have the Branch / Separation areas if you will .. they go Horizontal to the plant and for a stopper and a break between the sections so it may now work "in one go" as other plants are . Hemp and Cannabis are like nettle too and harder to pith out as well .. I grown both and have experimented myself out of curiosity and i found that "Bruising" part, hitting it with w stick like she did in the begging is called Bruising .. i had to Really give it a good belting to flatten those horizontal bits to flatten out if you will and it made it a bit easier to remove and if at all pith there is . I found it to vary with the Size/Diameter of the branch or stalk would make a difference and seems theres a "perfect" time to harvest it to make string or rope . I made a rope . I may experiment after i harvest this year, after watching this ive got more "ideas" to experiment with . Cheers .
Never heard of harakeke before, thanks for the info. As a Malay speaker it's interesting to learn that the root word is related to pandan.
Wikipedia:
"The hara in the Māori name harakeke is a remnant of the Austronesian root *paŋudaN (via Proto-Oceanic *padran) surviving in related languages referring to pandanus plants with similar characteristics of sheathing leaves also used for weaving (like Pandanus tectorius, also known as hala in Hawaiian), as New Zealand was one of the only places where pandanus was not available.[6]"
@@megabigblur
Thank you .
Put all my questions to rest.
All the best from Vancouver bc Canada
Soak for a week underwater to loosen pith then beat with a rock. Easier after soaking.
@@megabigblur That makes sense, many plant names here come from similar plants in the pacific, and harakeke and pandanus have similar uses and leaf appearance.
I literally just yesterday learned how to make nettle fiber thread on a drop spindle, sitting at the park out in the sun, looking weird to all passersby. I swear, ma'am, you are a psychic. For some reason, it always seems to take me forever to process nettles, but it may very well be that I just don't yet have the time put in it.
I find it's worth not overthinking nettle, give it a good scrape, see how it looks, scrape a bit more if it needs it. Often people relatively new to it worry about if they are scraping the right bit, or enough, but it's a material that tends to be fairly obvious in practice. How lovely to sit in a park to spin it!
Good video; I learned more about nettle processing for fibers. Maybe you already know this technique to make cordage fast, maybe not, but when I was about 9 years old, my dad showed me how he could make strongish cordage as he twisted two strands simultaneously on his thigh. You hold the twisted cordage in the left hand and let it fall on the ground to the left as it forms. The right hand moves the two uncordaged twists apart like a Y on the right side of the thigh, and then rolls them both between palm and thigh, letting them counter twist on each other each time as you lift your left hand gently to let them counter rotate to lock. You keep rearranging the Y wiyh your right hand, in between the hand roll. The two fiber blobs upstream of the cordage rotate separately somewhat, so the two twists gain their proper same twists, to lock against each other. No spindle needed.
I think it must be a quick way to make cordage that Indigenous Americans used and still use. My great grandfather was such.
To be honest, a little saliva spit on the rolling hand once in a while helps optimize friction for twisting the two fibers simultaneously. Haha
Someone else (like the kid learning) can manage the two clumps of wool or other kind of fiber, keeping them apart, stretching them into proper thread thickness for twisting, spicing them, etc.
But your finger twisting, twist and cross, twist and cross, is very precise.
Maybe thigh twisting is for bigger cordage.
Thigh twisting works very well, but I generally teach beginners to just use fingers because it's often hard to get thigh rolling to work over modern trousers, and it's faster to show the mechanics of how the twist and ply construction develops when they can see the strands in action. Thigh rolling is great for more large amounts certainly, but best when you can sit quietly to work, and I'm usually teaching in a crowd to lots of people at once 😁
@@SallyPointer do you have a video demonstrating this thigh twisting mentioned above? I'm more of a visual learner and though I'm going to try yours first, I'd love to know how to work with thicker cordage as well. I'm brand new to this but have always wanted to learn, so thank you for this video!
Spit has provided much usefulness thruout history ( I'm NOT talking about spitting on someone to debase them)
I lick the lens on my glasses to clean them because I have very oily skin. Cuts right thru the fingerprints.
I learned thigh rolling cordage making from a Native American supervisor I had at a history and heritage demonstration site.
I enjoyed the kitty interruption, what a cutie. 😄😍
This ought to become a major industry. I'd like to see clothing, draperies, rugs and bedding made of nettles.
There is a growing revival in working with nettles, even some commercial firms now.
@@SallyPointer Great. This needs to happen in the States.
This is fascinating! I was volunteering at my daughter's pre-school and the kids kept collecting long leaves (looked somewhere between a day lilly and a blade of grass) and bringing them to each other and the teachers and me in bouquets. I was bored out of my skull and decided to try and make a basket out of it by first braiding up some leaves and adding in a new one every time it got hard to work with and got a few lengths and was able to make a basket about the size of a sparrow's nest that fell apart as soon as the children noticed it. Nice to know I was on the right track!
Y'know, I was kinda wondering how early humans first learned to make textiles at all - how would you know that this plant could be woven together to tie things up - but you comment makes me think it may just have been some Neanderthal was bored one day and started just twisting grasses in their hands!
@@Rachel-fi4sc quite possibly. I'd read about making cordage but didn't have ready access to any of the plants that were suggested. While picking some herbs thought hmm that lemon grass is rather fibrous. And adapted what I'd read to the lemon grass. Since then I've used them to make several rather nice bracelets
You remind me, in the way you speak, how you teach, and your enthusiasm for your craft & subject, of some of my SCA friends (Society for Creative Anachronism, medieval society). Especially some of my friends up in British Columbia, who have a similar lilt as they showed me all the neat things they've learned to do with their own fiber arts explorations. With the pandemic making it impossible to go visit them, you've unexpectedly given me a touch of my friends, whom I miss dearly. It was just like being in their home, going over the steps for processing the flax linen my friends were processing for spinning. Thank you very much for evoking that good memory!
The definition of labor intensive
Hello from Indiana, USA. I have been a professional Spinner for 40+ years. In days gone by I would teach/demonstrate spinning at Historical American events as well as at American Pioneer and Revolutionary era villages. Also went to schools to teach and demonstrate.
I appreciate your channel and am glad to support you thru subscribing 😃.
All my children (I've been Blessed to have 6 sons then a daughter in 7 years, one each year 😍) learned to spin very well🤩.
Blessings
I found myself the other day wondering about what materials our early ancestors had for textiles. This is absolutely fascinating.
Here in California, we do have nettle, but I don't know where to find it, so I've used blackberry fiber. The preparation is virtually identical. Best to harvest in mid-late spring when the new canes are firming up but not yet dry and hard.
I find bramble gives a stiffer fibre, I use it as a basketry binder in some of my videos
You are truly opening my eyes, Sally. I had done most of my research on later, medieval age weaving and clothing, but this series of earlier work methods has really gotten my juices going. I am starting to look at my raspberry canes differently, and the twinning process is much more interesting than I thought. I know your Masters is taking a lot of your time, but I so hope that you continue to make videos as you can. Your teaching methods are so smooth and understandable that even a neophyte like me can understand and duplicate what you demo. I very much appreciate the work you do to make the videos and demo to the public all this great material.
There are youtube videos of Japanese splicing techniques where they take banana leaf fibers and actually knot the fibers together. I came across them while trying to learn about early Japanese textiles.
I'll look out for those!
This is such a huge help to me as a writer. Getting to see the process, hearing you talk through it and seeing the ways nettle and plants would be processed without drop spindles or modern tools. Thank you!
Another really interesting video, thank you. You are right though, Sally, I couldn't get my head around the end to end splicing method just by reading about it. Seeing both methods on paper, they look practically the same but actually watching it being done has made the differences in the methods very clear. I can't wait for the next instalment.
wouldn't it be fun to spend an afternoon with you : ) such a knowledgable teacher!
Maybe most of you already know this, but this video inspired me to look up other plant fibers, and I found that the cloth ramie is made from Boehmeria nivea, aka China grass, *_a plant in the nettle family_* that grows in China. Another variety called green ramie or rhea grows in Malaysia and is also used for cloth fibers.
as someone who weaves loads of friendship bracelets and adores repetitive actions, im certain id be good at this. i need to run out to a park and try to find some nettle and give this a shot! it'll be a fun failure should i not succeed
p.s. your cat is adorable and i love that you gave him a fascinator! im glad us cat moms are all the same 😂
Oh my goodness! I just have to thank you again! I've been spinning and weaving in rural Iowa for 45 years ( inadvertently growing loads of stinging nettle) and I never dreamed if using it for anything but feed for us and our critters!
I remember the story of the princess who made cloaks of nettle fir her 6 swan enchanted brothers- and since anyone who unwittingly put their hand into a nettle plant knows the ongoing agony of the blisters ...Ellis that was love for you. We always harvested in spring as a delicious vegetable and had nettle tea... thank you for this interesting program.
Thank you so much for uploading this, how lucky we are to have such amazing resources available to us, and free of charge too. I’ve recently finished my undergraduate degree in archaeology, and would love to get into experimental archaeology as you do. Brilliant stuff, and thanks too for linking the paper. All the best!
The ingenuity of ancient humans will never cease to amaze me. So many foods, materials, etc. that ARE useful if you're very careful, breed and/or process them in a very certain way, from plants and animals that start off seeming useless or sometimes even dangerous. Case in point: this. "Ow! That plant just stung me!" (pause) "...I wonder if I can wear it..."
(Of course there were steps in between that; I'm just speeding it up for humourous effect. :P)
Thank you soo much for this! You are a very good teacher, not talking all around the topic but getting straight to it, being both aware of the demands of technique and archaeological finds for information. I will certainly try to reproduce this. 🙂
Such a lovely visual explanation :) Tesla showing up at the end was also very much appreciated even if I he was causing a little mayhem
Thx so much for the video.
My grandfather thought me the continus method as a kid (we made cordage for the midsummer pole, the leafs and "green stuff" went into a nettle soup and the fibers dryed by the fire) there are no flint in Northern parts of Sweden (we were outside the town of Älvsbyn) so we cracked river stones to use as scrapers and frech Birch bark as a foundation to work on. He talked about weaving with the stuff but using the second method of non continuous splicing you showed (and using a spindle) but was firm on one thing and that was that that the splicing was butt to tip and the fold was against the thiner fiber or it could come lose when spinning it into yarn.
And if the cordage was to be saved or if you made a basket of the material you should smoke it using Juniper branches.
What did the juniper smoke do to the cord or basket, please?
@@LynxSouth sorry for a late answer, I know that one reason was to preserv the material from insects and mold but I faintly remember that it should help the strength of the fibers. "A winter weave that rots in summer or a rope that snaps in (because of) frost makes no maiden happy but makes for a good excuse"- is the qoute I remember
@@densamme1752 Thank you. :)
Thank you for such detailed visual instructions. I've a nettle patch in the back that grows to 2 meters in height, so it really does beg to be processed into fiber. I tried a couple years ago, following the process for flax, which wasn't ideal. With your instructions, I have the heart to try again. Thank you. I'll wait until the plants have finished their breeding though.
I remember reading a fairy tale about this little princess who has to make shirts from nettles that she gather in order to save her 6 brothers who were turned into swans.
AMAZING❗ We should teach all our children and youth such survival skills❗
In the Oseberg mound, were the most iconic Scandinavian viking ship was found, they also found a lot of textiles. The main part is woven tapestries and other woven fabrics, mainly of wool, but also of silk, linen, hemp and nettles ..
How fantastic... We can now use the whole Nettle plant. Learning to use the leaves and flowers for medicinal uses, and now the fibers as well for textiles. I love this... Thank you for sharing your video with all of us. Many Blessings to you always
Fascinating and clarifying, as always - thank you so much! Also for including the link to the paper, which I'll start reading asap.
Athena, goddess of weaving and home crafts, is generally supposed to have an owl as her animal representative, but, based on their involvement with fabric arts, clearly the kitty cat is Athena's actual animal.
Fantastic video about how to use natural plant fibres to make thread and even textiles. Eye openener
Tesla is soooo cute 💕💕, I've only recently tripped over your site but have subscribed 👍, I'm on the bushcraft side of things so the cordage of different materials is not a problem but it is good to see how people do things differently. What I am loving about your presentions is the further uses of certain natural fibres, I will never use them for weaving, but it is good knowledge knowing how they were used in other ways, Thankyou for keeping history alive and not just in books. 👍👍❤☕,
Nige.
Thank you!
Thank you for sharing your experimentation with nettle fibers. I have a passing interest in how our ancestors improved their lives with the natural items they found around them.
Always wandered about this subject on flax in prehistoric times....that was a great demonstration..also good survival knowledge...but nothing like doing it yourself.
Hilarious with the kitty and his nettle threads! So informative and interesting to see cordage and splicing methods and thread making. So wonderful, thankyou! 🌿
Excellent demo, good for primitive thin fishing line
Wonderful demo! Oh I just love your kitty. Kitties are always right. 😻
Aborininal friend shared splitting the nettle stalk, soaking and braiding it. Next day was dry and shrunk tight and super strong. They would create fish nets from it.
Sally- Patrick here. I had no idea your work was here! I'm stoked I found your bonnet patterns and now this! You were next after a video on hand baled hay. This is tomorrow's AM break
I turn up in the strangest places! Thanks for watching :)
@@SallyPointer you said TURNUP/TURNIP! OK, it sounds funny in my California accent.
@@patrickhayes3099 😄 we have a saying, "I'm not as green as I'm cabbage looking", suddenly I'm wondering how to alter that to include turnips 😁
Thank you for saying "what we think we know". Refreshing after so many arrogant scholars assuming they KNOW.
And bless your cat.😺
This was a great video. very informative. It's fantastic to see how many views it has. It makes me happy to know so many others are interested in the history of fiber crafts.
Ooh you remind me that father remembers his mother and other women gathering Stinging nettles to make cloth. They used to ferment it for a while in water, then clean out the soft material and then process it similarly to linen! And that's early to mid 20th century in Rural Europe.
excellent video, you're always covering things i've never seen anybody else do!
Thank you very much! There is so much I want to explore and it's fun to share it with people 😊
This method of cordage is so good for making delicate strands but my gods is it killer on your hands! Wonderful video, especially the info on the flint scrapers. Thank you!
Gracias - maravilloso trabajo - las ortigas, nacen en mi casa todo el tiempo - solo las utilizaba como fertilizante en purín - ahora le voy a dar otra utilidad - Saludos desde Argentina
I've been fascinated with this video ever since I saw it I have picked thorns and had them sitting around for months and finally shaved them down last week started making rope to find them together there are no other videos about this and I think it's pretty cool.❤
This is fascinating! I can’t wait to see what you make with it. I subscribed to find out. And thank you so much for saying that you are uncertain exactly how it was done, but trial and error tells you this is probably how it was done. Way too many scientists/researchers have too big of an ego for that simple statement. It makes me feel that I can trust your judgement.🐝🤗❤️
We can never be certain with prehistory, but trying to link the current evidence together into something plausible that we can then explore further is always good starting point.
@@SallyPointer You do it brilliantly! I was really impressed with how you “dressed” your fibers. When I see someone recreate something our ancient ancestors did, I always wonder how on Earth they discovered it in the first place.🐝🤗❤️
That's a good kitty. Also, thanks for the lecture, I never knew you could use nettles like this. I'll keep it in mind to save the stems if I ever get a bunch to make nettle soupe from the leaves.
When making cordage I use a hybrid of the two splicing methods you showed. I generally splice in one side at a time, but if I find fibers on both sides of the ply are ending at roughly the same time then I'll use the second method you showed where I lie the center of the new fiber across the ply and extend both sides at the same time. (I actually learned the second splicing method from one of your earlier videos, so cheers for that.)
Perfect! Everyone finds a way that works for them, that's the beauty of this type of work, and so fascinating from the perspective of an archaeologist too
Liked this video because of the lovely CAT!🥰😻And of course, Sally's profound knowledge and insistence on the prehistoric textile technique! Thank you for your sharing!This is my first time watching Sally Pointer, and found it very interesting on Sally's using of flints stones to shape and form the strings.
My brain cannot process how she stripped the stems with her bare hands and says it is “safe as long as you’re careful”! I have harvested and dried stinging nettles and almost always get brushed somewhere I thought was covered with long sleeves and leather gloves and the effects last for *hours*. This video though is fascinating and I’d love to give it a try! I’ve done wool processing and spinning and do own a drop spindle. Not sure my aged fingers will hold up to the splicing technique but I’ll try that too. Thanks!
Lamium album is a nettle that doesn’t sting, it has white flowers instead of the stingy versions purple flowers, I expect that would be a nice alternative if you find it.
I just stumbled across your video. It's so wholesome and informative! Thank you for making it!
This was the first, but it won't have been the last of your videos I watch!
fantastic thanks for this info..love learning about how the ancients were weaving nettle!!!
That was absolutely fascinating, thank you so much Sally. X
Great video, thank you! I know they arent historically used but havd you heard of anyone using japanese purple jewelweed or the flower stalks from lupins? Ive cleaned some up a bit and they are now drying. Both are hard to pull and break, about as strong as nettels and the jewelweed is a pink color while the lupins look very white and a bit shiny even dried.
I haven't used them my self but no reason not to try.
@@Susweca5569 I found that they were brittle after I dried them unfortunately. I couldn't card them, but maybe they could be processed differently? I didn't Rhett them at all. But I also found nettles to be brittle too. Maybe I have to process them to fibers before they dry out and the fibers can be spun. Anyway it's really abundant and beautiful shiny, almost pearly fiber
Reminds me of my mother's obsession with needlework and knitting. She was born in the thirties. It seems to be deeply ingrained into our cultures.
What an interesting and informative video. You went over several techniques that I've never tried, yet. Looking forward for the next videos on nettle fiber. Now I need to find a nettle patch.
This is my first time seeing anything like this, and I am amazed! And hooked! 😊 Your kind teaching style and patience is evident throughout the video. Thank you for sharing this! 🙏❤️
Oh, and I LOVE the cat at the end! ❤️
Tried something similar with yucca a number of years ago while preparing a short talk in ethnobotany for my MA Anthropology. Like you I used a lithic scraper, but now wonder from watching some basket makers if soaking in water didn’t get used during some periods for even short lengths of time. BTW, my talk intimidated my classmates 😂, but I included food.
The end to end splicing bit was fascinating for me, as that is how I was taught to splice my roving/yarn together for working by my grandmother when she was teaching me to spin and crochet. I didn't realize the technique was as old as that.
Thank you for this video. I am looking into using nettle fiber to make textiles. But first: let me have a look at your other videos - they seem to be all very interesting for me.
I saved this to my tutorials playlist. Thank you!👏👏👏👏👏🪶🪶🪶🪶🪶
We can use the nettles. We can eat nettles. We can make clothes with nettles. There is a lot of iron, a lot of vitamins, a lot of protein, a lot of vitamins in the nettles.
Thank you Sally for this very informative video! It has brought up some happy memories working with the inner cambium of western red cedar (& rarely, yellow cedar which grows near the ocean).
Feeling hopeful that this winter will see some time for creativity.🤞
Much appreciation for your extensive knowledge & experience that you've graciously shared in the videos you've uploaded to UA-cam.
You can also extract fiber from pineapple leaves by scraping and splicing, here in Philippines I think it's a similar process but of course using much modern technology 😊
I am impressed! I was thinking, Oh, I will do this and make a dress, then I thought, I will make a bag, then I thought, I will make a bracelet..... lol, a lot of work.... Also, dont throw the leaves away, this plant is good to eat, and good for hair rinse and probably lots of other things too!
The leaves at this stage of maturity aren't good eating, but I eat loads when they are younger.
@@SallyPointer oh. They are good for hair rinse. Lol
That was excellent, thank you! Now waiting for the next instalments! I hope you get help with those too - lovely cat!
Perfectly understandable - thank you for sharing this with all of us
a trick i use when end-to-end splicing wool (aka spit splicing) is to do something similar to what's known as a "russian join" - fold both yarns so that there's a loop on both ends wrapped around the other one and twist each end them each back against their parent strand rather than forward against the next strand. Not sure if that would have any applicability here but it makes for a quite sturdy join with wool that's more resistant to forces tugging on either end, from my experience.
Oh my goodness! I never imagined anything useful being done with stinging nettle! Fascinating!! This is so so interesting! Thank you very much! Just fascinating!! Bless you! Francis
Stinging nettles have all sort of uses. Tea, medicinal, it is a great fertiliser. The seeds are particularly nutritious as are the flowers. I make a wonderful patty with sweet potato, nettle and ginger.
Sally Pointer - My second video watching from this channel and i think i'm in love with it! So interesting and faschinating to me!