08/12/2025
Ok... post-scouring update... get ready for some 🤓 stuff
•
Scouring resulted in less smelly, less hairy and less wire-like linen. It's also very light now ( was right on everything!). Thank god the nasty hamster smell is gone 🤣
•
So, I have worked in pulp mills my whole career, and I was nerdily happy that I understood what was happening when I was scouring the linen. Scouring involves boiling the linen with washing soda and soap. Washing soda has a high pH, and was dissolving the lignin away from the flax fibres. Think of lignin like glue that holds cellulose (fibres) together, and treating it with high temp + high pH dissolves the glue out and leaves just the fibres. Knowing that the whole process works better if you can wash the fibres and then reapply the chemicals, I did a 30 min scour followed by rinses with plain water and then another scour. It was really clean after the second scour and only needed a couple of rinses. I also used borax in the second scour to kill the hamster cage smell. This is just like digesting wood chips to make pulp! My husband, who also works at a pulp mill was not nearly as thrilled as I was haha.
•
So the result is a lighter coloured, lighter weight, lignin free, better smelling linen thread.
•
I'll probably weave this into some dish towels. Stay tuned to see the rustic result, when I get around to it 😝
•
