4Dimensions Forum

General Category => Crafting Main Board => TextTileWorker => Topic started by: Molly on November 15, 2015, 05:25:11 pm

Title: TEXTILE RAW MATERIALS
Post by: Molly on November 15, 2015, 05:25:11 pm
The raw materials for Textileworkers are hemp, wool, flax/linen, cotton and silk.

HEMP is secretively cultivated in a remote valley on the island Icaria, because of its narcotic properties. But you can also find the hemp plants in several places along the roads, and even collect and sow the seeds, to produce more hemp stalks for yourself.

FLEECE/WOOL you get from shearing sheep, and there are two kinds, white and black. The fleece needs to be carded, before it can be spun to yarn.

FLAX/LINEN and COTTON you can cultivate yourself in the Farming Fields north of Old Yorke and outside Sutter's Fort. But both plants also grow wild, and you can collect and cultivate the seeds to produce your own supply of stalks and cotton bolls. Be prepared for the development from seed to full grown plant to take some time however.

With flax you use the stems, which have to be retted, heckled and combed before they can be spun.
With cotton you use the fluffy matter attached to the seeds, and cotton has to be ginned, to get rid of the seeds and chaff before use.

SILK is the most hard-to-get material, and consequently also the most expensive. The silk thread is spun by the silkworms into the cocoons they make when they go into the pupae stage before hatching to silkmoths. But silkworms live solely on the leaves of the Mulberry tree, and since they have many natural enemies, and food is usually scarce, very few of them ever get to the cocoon stage before they starve to death.
You can help the production by feeding mulberry leaves to the silkworms, either directly in the trees, or by breeding them from eggs to cocoons in a silkworm basket, that you fletch yourself from hemp stalks.