A field of linen is quite a sight, with tall plants with bright blue flowers, gently waving in the wind. The fiber is from the stems, harvested by pulling up the entire plant and allowing nature to wet the stems while in the field. These stems are left there for a while for the retting process to soften up the fibers and allow processing with minimal chemicals.
Linen is a vegetable fibre that has been used for clothing for thousands of years. The first fragments have been found to date back 8000BC.
Linen is the strongest of the vegetable fibers, with 2 to 3 times the strength of cotton. It is smooth, making the finished fabric lint free, and gets softer the more it is washed. However, constant creasing in the same place in sharp folds will tend to break the linen threads. This wear can show up in collars, hems, and any area that is iron creased during laundering. Linen has poor elasticity and does not spring back readily, explaining why it wrinkles so easily.
When freed from impurities, linen is highly absorbent and will quickly remove perspiration from the skin. Linen is a stiff fabric and is less likely to cling to the skin; when it billows away, it tends to dry out and become cool so that the skin is being continually touched by a cool surface. It is a very durable, strong fabric and one of the few that are stronger wet than dry. The fibers do not stretch and are resistant to damage from abrasion. However, because linen fibers have a very low elasticity, the fabric will eventually break if it is folded and ironed at the same place repeatedly.
Mildew, perspiration, and bleach can also damage the fabric, but it is resistant to moths and carpet beetles. Linen is relatively easy to take care of since it resists dirt and stains, has no lint or pilling tendency and can be dry cleaned, machine washed or steamed. It can withstand high temperatures and yields only moderate initial shrinkage. [2] Linen should not be dried too much by tumble drying: it is much easier to iron when damp. Linen wrinkles very easily, and so some more formal linen garments require ironing often in order to maintain perfect smoothness. Nevertheless the tendency to wrinkle is often considered part of the fabric's particular "charm", and a lot of modern linen garments are designed to be air dried on a good hanger and worn without the necessity of ironing.
Tips for knitting with Euroflax yarns:
- Most importantly, you must wash and dry all samples before measuring gauge. The knitted fabric relaxes after the first wash.
- Due to the nature of this yarn, it is not suitable for standard ribbing, on either the bottom borders or neck bands, however, knit-in-hems rolled borders and garterstitch borders all work wonderfully with this yarn.
- This yarn is more suitable for pattern knitting than for plain knits. Small areas of plain knitting are fine though.
-Please pay special attention to the recommended needles size given for each yarn. Larger needles should only be used for lacy patterns.
- For your first project, we highly recommend using one of our patterns, in order for you to get the feel of this wonderful yarn.
