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Specialty Fibers: Thistledown

© Lili Pintea-Reed

Specialty Fibers: Thistledown by Lili Pintea-Reed

Several years ago we were living in the country a bit down the road from a large pasture. Along the sides of the fence grew hundreds, perhaps thousands of thistles. It was quite a pretty sight when the thistles bloomed purple along the roadside. And then the down formed....

Being completely addicted to hand spinning, I passed by the downy fluff on my daily walks with increasing interest. It looked so much like cotton in the boll. Hmmm... I thought perhaps it is possible to spin it...

This worked like a worm in my brain for several days and finally, kid in tow, I walks down with a bag to pick thistledown. It was harder than it looked. Obviously thistles have thorns, some of which are not plain to the eye or more important, the hand. Furthermore, an amazing amount of seed seemed to want to come along for the ride. Eventually, I found certain thistle *bolls* shed the fiber without many seeds. Soon I had a plastic grocery bag of down.

The bag sat in my fiber stash for a very long time (two years) and got lost in the cupboard.

This last weekend I finally found it again after a move to our new house. It had survived surprizingly well. I decided to spin up a bit to see -- finally -- just how it handled. I carded it with fine handcards (cotton carders to some spinners). It carded up into a nice fluffy mat and the last few hitchhicking seeds were shed. I piled the rolags for a bit and tried spinning.

It was much like spinning the down from milk weed pods. Very lustrous and slippery. It did not mat well and the fibers slipped past each other unless overtwisted. I tried dampening the fiber as I worked. This helped mat the fiber together better, but the spun strands still pulled apart very easily. I was not satisfied with this a bit. I tried carding it with cotton at a 50:50 ratio and the resulting rolags spun into a very nice yarn with luster and color of the thistledown dominating. I plan on finishing the bag with this ratio mixture.

I boiled the spun yarn to set the twist, and the thistledown which is a bit darker than the cotton, showed even more luster rather than dulling from the heat. The yarn shrunk and matted which helped bind the slippery thistle fiber.