Our stinging nettles take forever to die off in the winter. It isn't until the hard freeze we get for a week to ten days after Christmas that they really start to die back, and even then there are hangers on.
But come Feb, all but the most shelter nettle plants are standing corpses (with the little baby nettles already peaking up in the leaf litter). A few days break from the rain and we can finally explore the root retting method for harvesting fibre.
On my bookshelf, you will find,Yarn from Wild Nettles, by Birte Ford. It's a great book with lots of ideas for, you guessed it - transforming stinging nettles into yarn. It is from here I got the idea.
Finally, I caught the nettles at the perfect moment in our weather cycle - so it's time to see if it works.
Here's what happened:
I think I know why it didn't work.
