Testing different softening techniques
Boiling with sugar
This made the wheat leaf grainy to touch, flexible but not soft. it took on an assitate like quality. It was then re boiled in plain water, this just made it similar to the boiled wheat. The wheat yarn however when spun did take on a lighter more golden colour.
Another experiment was conducted where the leaf leaf was cut into fine strips and boiled for a third time, in the hopes to make it softer, it however made it course and slightly dry even whilst wet. It retained its light colouring however was difficult to spin into yarn.
Boiling with salt.
This made the wheat leaf easier to pull apart and get strands to be fine. The wheat lost lots of it colour and became quite translucent. It was also quite easy to spin into yarn.
Stripping the wheat leaf
Previously i had cut the wheat leaf following the vertical cellulose lines, this meant that not always the strands were very thin. Through experimentation the stripping technique changed to following a knife over the leaf finely cutting the layers of the leaf into long thin strips. There was an issue as much of the time the thin strips would clip together and couldn’t be made into the long lines. This meant that whilst spinning the longer more defined strips were bound by small clumps of the string. This made it strong and not need to be double spun. creating a more consistent thread will be need to be done.
