The cloth from those seeds

I've known Maria das Dores for about two years. I couldn't forget the time I met her because I almost went bankrupt for buying yards and yards of the fabric she manufactures completely on her own, right from those seeds. I've been saving that fabric ever since and have only used a small square for a very special occasion.
I know more people that manufacture artisanal linen, but it is one thing to make a basic rustic linen, even if completely handmade, and another one is this wonderful thing that Maria das Dores grows and weaves.

Her style recalls much of the traditional work from her region, but her approach to work has nothing to do with an unconscious repetition of tradition. We've talked for hours and she keeps repeating how her goal is to produce the "best work" and the "best cloth". I don't hear this as often as I'd like.
It's not the cheapest, the easiest or the fastest. It's the best because she knows it is the only way of differentiating her work when it is time to sell it, and that's how she manages to support her household with a type of work that many say that doesn't have a future: always doing the best she can.

Maria das Dores is faithful to the Galego Flax. She has tried other foreign varieties, that grow taller and are more profitable, but she assures me that those varieties grow a thicker fiber, although longer, and that she can't spin a yarn thin and light enough to weave her cloth as fluid as she wants. Another thing is that she chose to process the fiber, from flax to linen, in a completely artisanal way, for the same reason. She has had the opportunity to speed up the process using semi-industrial machinery, but didn't use it because she felt her work wouldn't be as good.

From what I have learnt so far from the different varieties, I think one of the reasons behind this choice, of remaining completely artisanal, is the fact that the Galego Flax grows not only shorter fibers, but also thinner ones, that are inherently more fragile and demand more care during its processing.