phew, extremely delayed reply, but I sort of got flax to the point where I could spin it. I didn't grow a kind that was ideal for long fibers, and I also didn't process it the correct/traditional way. I did the whole soaking process to separate the fibers from the stem, then sort of went stem by stem, peeling off the fiber with my fingers, and from there I combed it in tiny little batches. So I wound up with, like, a handful of really beautiful golden fibers that I think, in theory, could have been spun, but by that point I was just like, "I have proved that this could work if I had a million hours to spend on it, experiment complete!!"

But I could definitely skip the combing process and do a coarse version of the stem vs. fiber separation and just work with the pieces like you've done with the milkweed to get some very useful twine!!

I think the only reason you couldn't knit or crochet with what you have here would be texture: it might be coarse for a garment that had a lot of skin contact, but it could be awesome for something like a sun hat or sandals/slippers. Anyway, thanks for chatting about fiberarts stuff, I'm mentally putting milkweed on my to-grow list for next year!