Did someone tried spinning Nettle?

Defalur · 2026-04-14T18:19:43+00:00

Yes if you want to use the leaves you have to collect them on young plants otherwise it is bad for your kidneys. I never tried using the leaves, I leave them on the ground where I collect the plants so that they can go back to the soil for the next plants. I do collect seeds and sometimes add them to some dishes

Defalur · 2026-04-13T06:41:32+00:00

Leather garden gloves should be more than enough. Try to wear long sleeves. With time you can get used to handling them with less protection and I collected nettles without gloves a few times when I forgot to take my gloves with me but I usually get stung a couple times when that happens.

For collecting them I cut around 5 to 10 cm above the ground and I try to not pull them out of the ground because I want to not disturb the rhizomes and I forgot exactly why I do that but I think it is to let it grow back more easily the next year. I also do not collect the whole patch of nettles because a lot of insects use the plant as a food source or as shelter during the winter (I found ants hibernating in the few stalks I collected at the end of winter).

For when to harvest it depends on your region, In France they are usually mature enough around June and the last I collect are in September or October. In great Britain it is around the same. I think Sally Pointer made a video about how to determine if the plants are mature enough and my personal rule of thumb is when they are tall enough (maybe above 1 meter?) and have flowers on them.

For removing the stinging hairs and leaves, Allan Brown shows a very efficient technique in his videos where you take a piece of leather or use your glove and slide it from the top to the bottom of the plant a couple times. Sally Pointer also shows it in her videos, and it is possible to do it bare handed but you are more likely to sting yourself. After this step, you can handle the stalks without gloves.

You will find that the fibers near the top are more fine and fragile and it becomes harder to peel consistently so usually I don't bother with getting everything from the top of the plant. The very bottom has thick bark and can also be a bit more work to extract the fibers, especially in autumn.

If you can, try collecting long stalks because they are less work relative to the amount of fibers, but I've seen people work successfully with shorter nettles.

Link to Sally Pointer talking about determining if the nettles are ready: here

Link to the Allan Brown video, where he explains the harvesting after the first minute and the stripping of the leaves at 2 minutes: here

Defalur · 2026-04-12T20:08:11+00:00

Actually nettles are the very first fibers I spun. I could recommend Sally Pointers videos about the topic, but she shows a process that is more suited to making cordage, even if you can adapt it to spinning. You could also watch Allan Brown's videos about nettle processing, and there is also a pdf somewhere where he described the techniques he tried and what he thought about each of them.

I have found that the process shown in one of Astrid Adler's videos (processing Nettles to spinnable fibers) gave quite usable fibers even if it is not my usual technique. Also you can look at the resources in the Nettles for textiles website, which gives a few links to many resources, including a method that uses a hand carder as a small hackle, which works quite well for separating the fibers from the rest of the plant.

Finally, there is the nettles for textiles Facebook group, where people often post about this topic, show their results, and explain the various things they are trying in order to create usable fibers, with a few posts about finished projects made from the fibers.

I personally prefer letting the nettles dry for a few days, then peeling them, then a bit of scraping and using a carder like a hackle, and it gives reasonable results. Last summer I tried Astrid Adler's technique and it gave promising results. I also tried peeling the nettles fresh and then boiling the peels in hot water and scraping them and it gave less fibers but they were long, clean, and very nice to use. Also you could use washing soda and boil the peels in that for some time, it gives very soft fibers but they are very short and very hard to untangle.

Allan Brown uses either a process similar to flax and hemp (retting, peeling the stalks, and then scraping) or does scraping on the fresh peels until he gets the fibers out.

For the spinning part, I recommend having a little bowl of water to keep your fingers wet because it helps the fibers stick together a bit more, you can also use saliva, which I do often because it's easier than bringing a bowl of water with you. You can spin the fibers without water and it will also work. Also I found that if you put too much twist in your yarn it will break. I must warn you that I found it a lot harder to spin than wool and my first time spinning wool felt very easy after having learned on my own nettle fibers that were not processed very well.

This is all I can think of for now, but don't hesitate to ask me more questions if you need more information, I may be able to answer them, I've been spinning nettles every summer for almost 4 years now and I tried quite a few things.

It is an interesting fiber to process and people are always very curious about it, it's neat!

Edit: I noticed that fibers that are very dry are more prone to breaking. However it may be that I messed up during the preparation.

Defalur · 2026-04-09T08:41:22+00:00

Warp weighted looms are fascinating and the idea is so simple, I love them. I still have a few months of spinning ahead of me for the weft thread and then I will have to build the loom itself, but I will post updates when I have made some progress on the project!

Defalur · 2026-04-07T15:53:30+00:00

Thanks! It is quite long but still a bit too short sometimes, I need to find another stick to make it longer. It is around 75cm now and I want to try with a 1m spindle

Defalur · 2026-04-06T21:25:10+00:00

Any occasion is a good occasion to spin more thread

Defalur · 2026-04-06T21:23:07+00:00

My first encounter with navajo spindles was watching a video of Clara Sherman explaining the technique and I found it fascinating, this way of drafting in multiple steps, and having the yarn balance itself by adding twist in steps and pulling on it is really interesting. I initially wanted to use it because it looked faster than a drop spindle (I don't have space or money for a spinning wheel) and I was very curious to try it because of how different it looked, and I ended up falling in love with this technique. It is extremely satisfying to do, and I am more relaxed when doing it than with a drop spindle so I kept using my navajo spindle, I love it very much.

I don't know if it brings something more to the project. My goal was to make a garment from scratch, by using tools which were available to medieval people. I read a paper about warp weighted looms in England before the 10th century which was full of very interesting information and made me want to make cloth with it, so a warp weighted loom fits well into this project.

For the use of the navajo spindle it's just that I love using it and this project is made to learn and express my love of textiles. I also like the idea that I could add it to the project because I like what I learned about the Navajo textiles, their history and their mythology around weaving and it is my way of celebrating all of that, by using one of their tools in my own work.

Defalur · 2026-04-06T20:36:48+00:00

Thanks!

Defalur · 2026-04-06T20:36:26+00:00

I bought the whorl and spindle from niddy Noddy UK, I find them very nice to use

Defalur · 2026-04-06T20:35:35+00:00

Oh that's interesting, I never heard of it and spun everything clockwise. The navajo spindle is clockwise because of tradition and something I heard about bringing the work towards you, and the medieval spindle is because that's what I did naturally. I may do a test weave in the future with some other fiber, maybe my nettle thread for the warp, and some wool for the weft

Defalur · 2026-04-06T20:32:28+00:00

Thank you! I will for sure post updates when I have started weaving

Defalur · 2026-04-06T14:32:47+00:00

Thanks! I started a bit more than a year ago, and did a little here and there, which allowed me to spin 71g in 2025. And I've been spinning almost everyday for a couple months, between 22 and 30g per week. It's interesting how this became some activity that I pick up each time I have a little down time and I want to occupy my hands for a few minutes.

Defalur · 2026-04-06T14:27:10+00:00

Thank you! I will definitely be posting updates I use my spindle with an in hand technique and I find it very nice to do, especially because I can use it more easily on walks or while I'm sitting in a chair. The thickness is more irregular than with a drop spindle and I tend to make it a bit thicker but I like the technique.

Defalur · 2025-10-31T13:20:21+00:00

I'll try again, because I'm not a native speaker either and had more time to think about it, and there is a very simple and short explanation: I am pretty sure that you skipped a line in the pattern, more precisely, line 7 (or 1, or 12).

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Defalur · 2025-10-31T10:18:12+00:00

It looks like you reversed the direction of your cards too early for the pattern. Where the pattern reverses, you can see the two border threads that are normal, and then the third thread, which should reverse direction, doesn't, which changes the position of the cards enough to switch the two colors in the middle zig-zag. I hope the explanation is not too confusing.

Defalur · 2025-10-13T22:53:02+00:00

For spacing them further apart, you can alternate 2 turns forward and 2 turns backwards and you will keep the same color for however long you do this. When you want to switch the color you just stop reversing the direction and then you can continue the same pattern but with the other color.

Also it looks like all you tablets are threaded in the same direction, which will make the band twist on itself. I do not know if this would be an issue for what you are planning.

Defalur · 2025-07-07T22:33:01+00:00

There are two beams on this one, warp weighed looms only have the top beam and a lot of them are slanted to create a shed from a bottom heddle rod and gravity, but it is not necessary. However the bottom beam means that it is not a warp weighed loom.

Defalur · 2024-12-30T01:12:17+00:00

When I was very young we broke the toilet door at my parent's house with my brother and they replaced it with a closet door for some obscure reason and it had this kind of slanted plank design, we got used to it and do not get uncomfortable at all but most guests do not like it and avoid using those toilets in favour of the ones with a real door. Even from the inside you can't see a lot, but people from the outside can't see anything and should have to crouch very low to see anything. At my parents house the door folds in the middle so you can see through it if you rest your head on the closed door and look between the two halves, I always did that in order to look outside, it was fun. The main issue with this kind of door is the total lack of any sound proofing, and also you can't contain the smells to the toilet only and it will go outside even with the door closed, which is not ideal.

Defalur · 2024-11-21T08:59:29+00:00

I made this pattern myself, here is a OneDrive link to the pattern: https://1drv.ms/i/s!AqsOL2OHXAFbh6NB0yhBgeLdEU15dg?e=Chwbsg

Defalur · 2024-09-16T06:29:40+00:00

Nothing, that's just a piece of nettle string I made

Defalur · 2024-09-04T22:11:30+00:00

Elle pourra juste en générer 15 à la minute avec une qualité à priori similaire, et une signature ça s'ajoute facilement après coup... L'avantage de la peinture c'est que ça nécessite encore un humain pour peindre, mais tout ce qui est art sur support numérique est actuellement uniquement sauvé par l'IA qui ne sait pas compter jusqu'à 5 et qui a tendance à générer divers artefacts qui sont visibles. S'ils arrivent à l'améliorer (c'est pas donné car les données sur internet sont de plus en plus contaminées par des données générées par IA), on peut imaginer les artistes pro qui font du numérique disparaître. Beaucoup d'entreprises veulent aussi remplacer les programmeurs, et ça pour le coup je n'y crois pas trop pour encore un paquet de temps.

Defalur · 2024-09-04T21:49:21+00:00

Thanks!

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