Through a Glass, Darkly @aunders - Tumblr Blog

trashhand

samhorine

south eastern iceland - october 2014 (1/2?)

samhorine

south eastern iceland - october 2014 (2/2)

natgeofound

A group picnics on a field in Thessaloniki, Greece that was once a malaria-ridden swamp, 1940. Photograph by B. Anthony Stewart, National Geographic Creative

nickgerber

Here’s, I guess, Part Two of My previous post in color. It’s the freakin Columbia River Gorge and it’s totally gorge(ous). Pun very clearly intended, despite how bad it was. Here’s pictures… what do you want… if you’ve been, you know and if you haven’t been, there’s nothing I can type which will convince you to go more than the pictures. No matter what, you need this in your life.

aunders

nickgerber has done a lot of great work with nature recently. You should go follow his blog!

nickgerber

Highway 26 from Portland to The Pacific Coast

I took a ride from Portland to the coast to see what Cannon Beach was all about. I didn’t know what to expect, but I certainly wasn’t ready for the beautiful moss covered forests. It was the most amazing thing and I so, so, so want to go back!

chrisozer-deactivated20250406

Lempira, Honduras

twheat

Cozy cabin & alpaca farm near Carters Lake, Georgia.

chrisozer-deactivated20250406

Photos of my fam from my recent shoot for MasterCard’s One More Day campaign. October light is the best.

aunders

Some great shots by @chrisozer.

Preparing Flax

In a bit of a departure from my normal subject, I would like to spend this post discussing how to prepare flax. All of the pictures were taken at Mount Vernon estate, where I got to watch the process first hand ( and decided that it was really cool).

Harvesting usable flax thread from the plant is surprisingly simple. First, the stalks of flax are allowed to rot (called "retting"). This can be done either wet (for lower quality flax) or dry (which takes longer, but yields a higher quality product). A wet retting — whether in a pond, stream, or sealed garbage can — takes between five days and two weeks, depending mostly on the temperature of the water. Dry retting generally takes from three to four weeks.

The purpose of the retting is to allow to woody part of the flax stalk to rot away from the fibrous interior. Once it is sufficiently rotted, the flax is "broken" by a blunt blade-press. Typically, the flax will be broken section by section, until it is limp and thready. This shatters whatever woody part remains without damaging the fibers.

After breaking, the flax is hung vertically on a scutching board and a large, wooden scutching knife is run repeatedly down its length. This removes any large wooden bits, leaving mostly fibers. The fibers are then passed through progressively smaller hackling combs, which remove any stubborn wood pieces and pull the fibers into alignment.

At this point, the flax is ready to be spun. The spinning process is almost identical to the spinning of wool, with the addition of a distaff for the longer fibers. Spun flax can then be dyed and turned into any number of products and materials.

And there you have it — flax from field to folds of cloth (well, almost)! Many thanks to the workers at Mount Vernon for their pictures and demonstration of the process. If you are interested in some further reading, the Wikipedia article goes more in depth on the preparation process, and The Joy of Handspinning has lots of good information on working with flax.

Happy spinning!