Knitting with Linen Yarn

"Look at this linen thread I bought at Wonderwool. Still perfectly good to use, even though it was probably spun in the sixties.  That's natural flax beside it. " Elinor paid me no attention.  "People have been spinning fibre from flax plants for thousands and thousands of years. Long before you sheep had woolly fleeces."  
I was keen to give my companion the benefit of my textile archeology knowledge.  "Three thousand years ago in Cambridge, there 

were Bronze Age villagers who wove linen cloth so fine it had 26 threads to the centimetre."  
At last, she turned to look at me.
"Oh, you watched that telly programme too, did you?"
Curses, I thought she'd missed seeing it. Damn BBC iPlayer.
"Yes, well, I thought I might grow my own flax next year."
"Remember your medieval nettle retting attempt, Beaut?  Or should I say, nettle rotting?"
"It was a bit smelly."
"A slimey heap of stinky stalks and not enough fibre to spin knickers for gnat." Elinor dropped the flax sample and settled her specs more firmly on her nose.  "Three and a half thousand years ago, the Mesopotamians spotted some woolly sheep among their short haired flocks. They had the sense to know when they were on to a good thing.  Do yourself a favour and benefit by that historic advance.  Wool is the way forward."

Expecting a grouchy ewe to admire my lovely new skeins of linen from Midwinter Yarns was as futile as the nettle experiment.  I found them most exciting, the plant fibres handling very differently to wool.  Though the skeins felt stiff and heavy, linen fabrics are supposed to soften with repeated washing and ought to last for years without pilling or shrinking or being eaten by moths. Of course, a sensible woman dealing with an unfamiliar yarn would have knitted samples on different sized needles, washed them and then made a considered choice about her pattern.  I just started knitting a Boo Knits Shawl called Out of Darkness.  It was advertised as 'harking back to an era of timeless elegance', so I decided using the contemporary product of a prehistoric fibre would be classically immemorial, enduring and well, spot on.
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Linen is utterly inelastic, the flax fibres being smooth and straight with none of the crimp that gives wool its body and bounce.  This may be why the knitted tension in the first garter stitch section looked so uneven -  I just pressed on, hoping it would improve after a wash and blocking out.  The yarn slips along the needles very easily, which is nice til stitches accidentally slip off the needles. With little internal friction to hold

the yarn in shape for those vital seconds while you pick the lost stitches back up, lace knitting proved an exceedingly ambitious project.  I suppose plying linen has to be loose, to keep it smooth and avoid a string-like toughness.  It does mean the yarn splits easily, which would have been less of an issue if I hadn't decided on adding beads with holes only big enough to take a 0.5mm crochet hook, which often wouldn't catch hold

of all the singles at once. Knitting and beading the smallest version of the pattern took a while and once off the needles, it looked and felt more like chainmail than lace. After a machine wash at 30 degrees, the damp fabric was transformed into soft pliability, strong enough to withstand a real beasting of blocking out with pins. Elinor caught me unpinning the shawl.
"Mmm, I see it's dried stiff again."

"On the plus side, linen is holding the lace patterning to better effect than wool."
"Yes, I can see a few bodges."
"No-one will notice when it is being worn."
"Well, I shan't be modelling it."
"No need.  My daughter has no objection to plant products.  She is much more up with the times than you. Quinoa and soy milk are meat and drink to her."  

"Ooo, very impressive.  Let's ask her to eat the ragwort in the garden, shall we?"