Raising Textilecraft Skill

[Bert Preast]

Has anybody managed to skill up in textilecraft yet?

I started with 14%, and a year and a hundred poor cloth cords later I am still at 14% 

It's irritating because when I try to make clothing the poor cords always drag the quality down and the best I can get is "rough".  I thought textilecraft would concern making yarn, and why bother when I can buy yarn so cheaply in the villages?  But it turns out that all my yarns become poor cords, because my skill is rubbish.  This is a problem because finding actual cords is like looking for rocking-horse poo. 

From my observations, making cords doesn't seem to gain textilecraft skill (I have 3 stars in the skill gain column), so does anyone know what does?  Should I carve a hundred spindles, or look to harvest the world's supply of nettles for retting and yarn?

EDIT - making cloth cords does raise textilecraft!  Just made another 4, all of the poor quality but got the skill up