So what ARE your opinions on field vs water retting? I’m gonna farm some fiber this year
Water retting makes flax a beautiful golden color, but field retting is easier to keep an eye on.
ALSO, I've come to the conclusion that Tolkein's Teleri elves did field retting for the sails of the swan ships, because field retting leaves the flax a beautiful silvery gray, and while all flax will eventually bleach to white with washing in lye and sun the sails are supposed to be pale and the silver would suit the aesthetic better than the golden color you get from water retting. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Oh you’re SO right about that. Now I’m thinking about elven textile manufacturing….
Welcome to our super niche nerd Tolkien Elves Textile Work Fan Club. Me and @batsintheshadows are founding members. We both have Opinions about linen and nettle fiber.
The amount of time they have to master stuff no arthritis or aging eyes their lace craft is probably sickenly good.
THAT'S WHAT WE'RE SAYING LIKE
These MF folks can casually spend 300 years mastering bobbin lace and then can casually spend 100 years making one full length entire ass bobbin lace DRESS out of linen spun as fine as a sigh. Can you fucking IMAGINE the absolute Bullshit they get up to with fancy weaving.
And you'd be far less likely to lose techniques to time. Like, there's a bunch of stuff we don't know about even just flax processing, because most of the people who were insanely good at it lived before the world wars. The world wars messed up linen production at scale in a lot of Europe, and people didn't have the resources to get back to it until after a lot of the experts had already died of old age.
Old age is not an issue for the elves. Quite aside from having the individual ability to spend time on their work, you just wouldn't lose the experts.
My guild has been part of an effort to reprint the Davison green book, in cooperation with Marguerite Davison's descendants. Imagine if we just, like, still had Marguerite Davison.
I mean, we can't know how many techniques were lost to Fëanor's BS, but I bet there were some Teleri sail weavers with special techniques. But at least time itself wouldn't be the problem.



















