From flax to loom
Linen is slow by nature. From the blue flax flower to a finished length of cloth is months of work, most of it before a single thread reaches the loom.
After the flax is pulled it is laid out in the field, where dew and rain loosen the woody stalk from the fibre inside. Get this wrong and the fibre is weak; get it right and it is strong and pale.
The dried straw is broken and scraped to free the long line fibres, then combed through beds of pins until what is left is soft, parallel and ready to spin.
The line is dressed onto the distaff — the verpstė — and spun wet, drawn through damp fingers so the fibres bind into a smooth, lustrous thread.
Hundreds of threads are measured on the warping mill to the exact length and count of the cloth, then wound onto the loom's back beam under even tension.
Each thread is drawn through a heddle and the reed by hand — a day's work before weaving even starts. Then the shuttle goes back and forth, pick by pick.
Off the loom the cloth is hemmed, washed and pressed. Only now does the stiff woven web bloom into soft linen. Nothing is added to fake that softness.