Nettle cloth

[catsittingstill]

 I learned something interesting this evening.  I had run across references to a nettle shirt, or nettle cloth a time or two and I thought it was a metaphor for doing something impossible or very unpleasant.  But it turns out if you dry nettles (cut them and let them dry out like hay) they lose their sting.  And they have fibers running up their stems like flax.  Those fibers can be removed and spun, and the thread or yarn knitted or woven to make cloth, which supposedly can be very fine, sometimes even resembling silk in texture.  Nettle cloth exists today (it's used in some very fancy eco-friendly clothes andd some people are trying to persuade more farmers to grow it), was supposedly used by the Germans as a substitute for cotton in the times when war put the cotton trade out of their reach, and existed as far back as 2,800 years ago in the Bronze Age.

Isn't that cool?  

You can even order nettle fiber and nettle yarn (though the only place I saw it this evening has its web page in French and charges in Euros, but it would probably be possible to work something out.)  Might be cool for either pagans or SCA folk or both. 

Comments

[onyxlynx]

Wow. I never saw references to nettle cloth outside of fairy tales, which made it sound extremely unpleasant.

[catsittingstill]

Just putting the two words together makes it sound horrid because the only thing I knew about nettles before was that they had a very painful sting. I will never look at those fairy tales in quite the same way again.

I suppose the part where you have to go out and cut the nettles might still be a nasty chore, but perhaps it's like beekeeping--if you know you're going to be dealing with that today, you take precautions that make it not so bad.

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

It's used in spellcraft. Nettle cloth is highly durable even under intense magic that will eat through most other fibers. It's mentioned in old fairytales, folklore, a few grimoires, that sort of thing.

Re: Yes...

[catsittingstill]

*grin*

I thought it might be something pagans might like, though I know nothing of its traditional magical uses.

Nettle cord might have some uses too, now that I think of it. If I were improvising a ritual to bind a threat away from me, I might use nettle cord.

(Note that I generally don't do such things, having realized that I don't actually believe. But the metaphors have always spoken to me powerfully and still do. I sometimes refer to myself as a secular pagan.)

[sedge]

Yep! If I had any around here, I might try retting it for the fiber. I know some people online who've spun some of the Asian fiber and really enjoyed it.

[catsittingstill]

Apparently nettle fiber suitable for spinning does exist, the way one can buy roving of other fibers.

I would love to have a nettle garment--that just sounds SO COOL but I expect that unless the fiber becomes a lot more common it will always be a super-expensive kind of thing.

[sedge]

I am definitely intrigued.

By the way, "roving" is a term of art for one specific type of fiber, which I doubt you'll find used for nettle much.


For spinners, I'd recommend just looking for

nettle fiber spinning

[catsittingstill]

I thought roving was just machine carded stuff of whatever fiber. Does it have to be a particular fiber to be roving? So there can't be silk roving or hemp roving?

[sedge]

There can be - but there's other kinds of preparation, like combed top, where the fibers are all parallel. I wouldn't want linen or hemp in roving form; that jumbles up the fibers, which can be great for wool and whatnot, but for linen in particular, roving is not a good choice structurally, and I imagine it might be bad for nettle as well.

[sedge]

...and in fact when I go looking for nettle fiber, it appears that none of what's on the market for hand spinners has been mechanically processed at all, so it's technically neither roving nor top. (For that matter, it's also neither cloud nor sliver. Ah, technical terminology!)

[sedge]

"Nettle as a distinct Bronze Age textile plant" - an article I was just given the link to elseweb, in a funny coincidence.

[batyatoon]

That's so cool! I never knew that either.