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Scotch
Thistle
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September 16, 2002 - Playing around with the cattail heads and making paper with them led me to surmise thistle heads and/or fluff would also make paper. Well, my first experiment with the thistle heads minus the fluff proved out.
Being
a spiney, stickly plant, I ended up having to use the garden snips to get the heads off. I
harvested just enough to make a few sheets then bolted inside and dropped them into a pot
of water with washing soda in it (one tablespoon per quart of water). Since the heads were
so prickly, I didn't bother to cut or crush or anything - I just dropped them into the
pot, brought them to a boil and then simmered them for four (yes! four! and that still
wasn't really enough) hours. Under threat of banishment from the kitchen, I stopped there,
but could have gone, I think, one more hour for an ideal batch of cooked fiber.
Nonetheless, the resulting fiber was still delightful.
I
bagged the fiber in my curtain material and rinsed it thoroughly, figuring on chopping it
up after rinse. The thorny heads were not prickly at all while wet, so handling was a
breeze. When I opened the curtain after rinsing, the heads had come completely apart by
themselves! What a treat!
I
grabbed a very small handful, as the fiber is strong, and dropped it into a quart of water
waiting in my blender.
It
took a good two to two and a half minutes of whirling on Liquify to get the pulp down to a
reasonable length.
The
fiber was still somewhat long, but I tried not to make any more noise than I had to so I
didn't process it down real fine. Thistle heads will make a gorgeous pulp when I finally
get my Baby Critter up and running.
Still,
it made a lovely paper. I put a couple handsful of pulp into my vat and pulled one sheet
without a deckle and one with. It was a challenge to pull without a deckle as the fiber
rushed from the surface quickly and I felt almost lucky to have any left on the screen.
The deckleless paper was impossible to couch and I ended up peeling away some of the paper
from the screen. The paper with the deckle was much more successful as the fiber was
trapped. It drained fairly fast, but not in a whoosh and fairly evenly. I was still unable
to couch it, so I blotted it real good and then picked a short edge free and gently peeled
the paper from the screen in its entirety. I ironed both sheets. While wet, they were very
delicate. When dry, they are quite strong, not a soft paper but not rattly. When folded,
it holds the line and the paper doesn't break along the fold. It is a delicious khacki
tan. The only drawback to this paper is it still bites! A point was along the edge of the
deckled paper and stuck me! It didn't hurt, but it was enough to get my attention!