Thanks, Nancy & Anne. That’s what I thought, plus that the early machines spun cotton and wool, is that correct? And yes, I am not close to my library either, but Pat Earnshaw’s thread book is subtitled ‘From Source to Sink’ if I remember correctly? I also had understood that early flax produced finer fibers which were lost. I have recently acquired some old and very fine flax stricks from Christiane Seufferlein, an Austrian who was gifted stricks from the descendants of a woman called ‘Berta’. Word got around plus an article was published in a UK journal for spinners and weavers resulting in many other families gifting Christiane with old flax stricks from doweries of ancestors. She has created a Facebook group called ‘Berta’s Flax’ named after this first flax gift, and is sharing all this flax with spinners all over the world for just the cost of postage. The flax I received is much finer than any I have seen before and I am anxious to see how fine a thread I can spin and hopefully use to make lace. Discussion in the group seems to suggest that the potential fineness may also depend upon the point at which the plant is harvested, as well as the subsequent steps (retting, breaking, scutching, etc.)
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