Bunch of tying equipment related additions are being worked on. It's a sector of code where meandering from one feature to another is quite easy, and sometimes required, but these main blocks are on the table right now:
* Auto-cutting tying equipment to required lengths in crafting/building.
For example: If you'd need say 5 feet of cordage and select a 15 feet rope for the job it's auto cut to required length and the remaining portion (10 feet) stays in your inventory.
With this new condition in effect the cordage minimum lengths however will come into play. So with the above example you need to select 5 feet long cordage minimum, and would need to join the cordage manually first if only shorter pieces are available. In any case it makes more sense, and is less of micro-management, than the current system.
* Few cordage classifications as crafting requirements
Currently the actual tying equipment properties aren't that much checked in crafting processes. Almost any tying equipment works for any job. Now we'll see about adding a few requirement classifications such as "strong cordage", "thin cordage" or "thread". These would work so that for example "strong cordage" requirement accepts ropes and spruce withes - which are the strongest type of withe. Crafting for example a raft would required "strong cordage" for tying, and now you could use ropes and spruce withes that, but not the other kind of cordage outside the classification.
Arrow making would require "thread" type cordage. Loop snares could be only made from "thin cordage". And so on.
Classification is still under construction so different wordings can be suggested, and ideas posted here. It's can be quite tricky to find terms that would open up easily, and not to end up with too many categories. Naturally the game will also display messages about this-and-that requirement accepting this-and-that items.
Strong cordage - ropes, spruce withes
Thin cordage - strings, cords
Thread - yarns (or sinew threads, whenever we get there)
etc.
* Nettle processing
We'll add the steps to be able to make nettle yarn, and then see where it goes after it's working ok.
In addition to retting and beating the fibres out of the stems, there would be preferably also the easy early summer method where you can extract the fibres by hand and make primitive yarn fast - eg. for survival fishing rod line.