(For transparency: This blog post was written on 19/12/2024 as an extended version of an LinkedIn post dated 30/09/2024. It has been backdated to the date of that LinkedIn post so that it appears in the correct order in the blog summary.)

Welcome to the fibre-processing corner of my website.

“Fibre processing? What’s that got to do with translation?” I hear you ask.

Well, I could give a long and complicated answer about how it ties (no pun intended) into all of my specialist areas. For example, understanding the steps of manufacturing textiles is a key part of working on texts about making those processes more circular. Or take the food systems angle: There is huge scope for adding value to some of the by-products of the food system (like sheep’s fleece), or introducing fibre plants such as flax into rotations as a valuable cover-crop. Or I could even make the case for ‘the big picture’ – a good translator needs to be curious about the texts they work on and about how things work. For me, that is expressed in a genuine love of understanding how the things we interact with on a daily basis (like our clothes) are made.

But the honest truth is, I just really enjoy thinking about it, and I strongly suspect there are a few of you out there who feel the same. And if that’s you, you can find a list of all the previous posts on this topic here.

Today’s topic is: rippling

When I first introduced the term “rippling” in a previous post, I promised that all would be revealed, and I do try to keep my promises. But you might find the answer a bit underwhelming - it’s basically the process of combing the seedheads out of the dried bundles of flax. On the off chance you’re not sure what part is the seedhead, it's basically the round bit at the end of the stem:

Inside each is a series of little chambers, each of which could potentially contain a seed. Actually, in fibre varieties, there’s comparatively few seeds – usually a maximum of 2 per head. Flax has been cultivated for at least 5000 years, and over that time (as with every other type of cultivated crop), varieties have been selected depending on their intended use. Flax can be used for fibre production, as I’m doing here, or the seeds can be crushed for oil (also called “linseed” oil in English). If cultivating for fibre, the goal is long stems, whereas if cultivating for oil, the goal is maximum seed production. Could you get a variety that would work for both? Well, theoretically, I suppose, but this would result in plants that were tall with heavy seed heads at the top, which would make them far more susceptible to something called “lodging”. This is when crop plants bend over in the wind or rain and the stem frays or snaps, resulting in crop damage or, in extreme cases, failure. This phenomenon – lodging – was actually one of the problems that Normal Borlaug (the economist and key figure in the Green Revolution) was attempting to deal with in his breeding experiments, though he was working on wheat rather than linen, of course.

Anyway, as the name suggests, rippling is usually done with a tool called a “ripple”, which is a large wide-spaced comb with metal (blunt - unlike the hackles that we’ll meet in a few weeks) tines. It’s normally raised up on a stand so you don’t have to bend over. In the absence of one of these tools, I have opted for the high-tech alternative of an upturned rake:

I did read that you can use a dog-hair brush, but I had a look at one and decided the tines looked too small - more likely to start breaking the stem fibres apart before they’ve been softened through retting (see next post).

Why separate out the seedheads? Well the seeds are what contain the oil, and there’s a good chance you’ve eaten linseed. They can be pressed to make linseed oil, ground up, or simply stored to grow next year’s crop. More importantly for my purposes, they can’t be processed as part of the spinning, and it’s important to gather them up to avoid self-seeding, as flax can become a bit of a garden thug according to a landscaper friend of mine.

As you can probably see, nature was a bit ahead of me here - quite a lot of the seed heads had fallen off whilst the flax was drying out, so they were all over the floor of my polytunnel. I did try to take a video for you, but it’s a two-handed process and I didn’t have a tripod so it didn’t really work - hopefully you get the idea though. You drag the bundles through the tines, pulling the seedheads off to gather on a bit of cloth etc. I was going to add a bit here about winnowing the seeds from the heads, but I’ve been too slow, so most of the seeds have already dropped. I guess this is why some people recommend starting with the rippling. A useful lesson for next year.

The process also starts separating out some of the shorter stems. I did wonder whether to bother keeping them. The shorter strands (the “tow”) are actually perfectly usable, though they don’t produce the same fine soft fabric. In fact, if you buy flax fibre for hand spinning from a commercial processor, the bundles tend to have been cut to a typical wool rollag length. This is so they can be held in just the hand when drafting, a process that is much more familiar to wool spinners like me than using a distaff. They’re also easier to blend with other fibres in that form. So I’ve kept them, as practice material if nothing else.

And that’s about it. Having been denuded of their seedheads, the bundles go back outside to be retted, more on which next time…