Flax to Linen

 A couple of weeks ago I had the wonderful opportunity to go somewhere with just my husband...no kids. He had a conference type meeting in Washington DC that fell over the weekend of our anniversary (17 years!). I tagged along and my very kind sister came and watched the kids for a week.  To DC we went.  The interesting thing about this trip was that my husband was busy all day, every day from 7am-6pm, so guess what I got to do? Everything by myself, whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. It was heavenly!

 I picked the things that I wanted to do and one day I spent the entire day (I did sleep in rather late) walking around Mount Vernon. I took my time, read every sign, sat in the garden watching the butterflies and one of the most interesting things I did was listen to the entire demonstration on how flax is turned into linen and was able to ask as many questions as I wanted.  I was fascinated. I of course knew that flax was used to make linen, but I don't think I've ever seen what exactly flax looks like, what part of the plant is used and how they spin it into the string.  Who knew? I just wish I would have taken more pictures, but I was so interested in what she had to say and plus I was the only one standing there for more than a minute and I was asking a lot of questions.  Here below you can see a fresh picked bunch of flax and one that is dried out. It then goes through a process of pounding/whacking to knock off the course stock to get to the fibers inside. It is then combed and the fibers are then spun together to make the string.  Now I know how linen is made.

 So now I'm back, a little more relaxed and trying to catch up with everything I need to be doing.  But it was so nice to have a little time to myself to just enjoy the flowers.