Make twine - PEP BB textile.sand.twine

I used fiber from the dried stalks of Rose Mallow, gathered in spring:



Like many mallows, it is slimy when wet, and needed a good 2 month rhetting.


I used the thigh/palm method of twining


Total length over 24 ft; here you can see there are 6 loops over 48 inches (2 x 24):



I am impressed with this material, it is at least equal jute in strength.  Very long fibers.  Once you've soaked it long enough to get rid of th sliminess, easy to work with.

Hey Skip team! I heard cordage could be made from mallow stems at the end of the season. So here, in winter, I harvested mallow stems. I treated them like nettles, and strippedoff the leaves and outer skin. The inner pith also had to come out, as it wasn't very pliable. The resulting fibers were usable! So I made all the twine I could from not-frlzen mallow I could find. It took 4 hours, and made about 8 feet.

Then I made simple twine from a natural, thin cordage I had lying around. I'm getting better at twisting the right directions! Here are about 18-inch diameter loops, making about 16 feet.

Altogether, 24 feet of twine.

This was a blast! I’ve never done any cordage or basket weaving, but I got inspired last summer and dried a bunch of stuff from the garden to try and learn this winter. First lesson: wild iris leaves are waaaaay too splitty. Garlic leaves and stems worked much better.

Process: soaked dried stems and leaves in a 5 gallon bucket while I did the dishes (~20 minutes)
Squished the stems with a rolling pin and peeled off sheets of fiber
Used the twist-and-pinch method

Results: 21+ feet of garlic twine. The stem portions produced a surprisingly stretchy, flexible cord. The leaf segments are also strong but lack give. Was a lot easier to work with though!

ETA: in case it isn’t clear from the photos, the yardstick shots are one continuous 21 ft length, I’ve just photographed the front and back of the yardstick separately.

After looking for nettle all last spring, I recently discovered a huge patch right by my community garden. Time to make some twine!

Process:
First I stripped off all the leaves from the nettle.
Then I broke the stems with the pestle from my mortar and pestle.
From there, I peeled off the outer skin and made 4-5 strips.
With two of the strips, I twined them around each other and slowly wove in more strips as I reached the end, crushing and peeling more nettle as I needed it until I was done.

I may have gone a bit overboard on how much I collected, because this ended up making about 35 feet (For the last two pics, I have 13 loops next to ruler. Each long side of the loop is 12 inches, and the top and bottom curves are around 3 inches, that's around 30 inches per loop, so around 390 inches or 32.5 feet total)
*corrected # of loops and subsequent math

I made twine from himalayan blackberry brambles.

Going from raw materials from the garden was fun (and extra motivating since I'm out of the state for a month and won't have access to blackberry vines for a while.)
I stripped the vines of their leaves, then ran my leather gloves over the vines to take off all the sharp thorn points.
Then I bashed each branch with a stone to loosen the fibers from the pith.
I stripped the fibers off.
Then I ran a knife over the fibers to remove the skin and warty thorn bits left.

I brought my shiz inside and then twisted the bugger together.
Had a lot more fiber than I needed. Good to know!
Here are two end result videos of the final measurement - excuse my nasty floor.
Pics below of various steps of the process and the final twine!

Making twine from blackberry brambles.

I volunteer with a group most Fridays and, last week, someone taught me to make 2-ply cordage/twine. I used fronds from a Cabbage Tree (Cordyline) which I split into fibers and then twisted together, 3 or more at a time, into two strands which I plied to form twine.

My twine, which I finished in about 3 sessions (a total of maybe 3 or 4 hours, it took a while!), is approximately 35 feet. I'm quite surprised that 8 fronds was able to produce such a long length.

I've not tested the strength but it feels very sturdy and I'm not able to break it by hand.

I harvested some rushes that grow in our fields to make this twine. It took a little bit to find a rhythm, but I think it turned out well. My measuring tape was only 16 feet so I folded the twine at the ten foot mark and made sure I had the right length.

Bethany, would you be able to post a picture of the twine with a ruler next to it, so we can verify it's the right length. Thank you!