I know both of these suggestions have been made before:
- create another purpose for linen, as there is no use for it beyond banners and torches, which make it hardly worthwile to produce.
- training dummies
I'd like to merge the two:
Linen could be used to make and repair training dummies. Sparring with a training dummy should yield pretty decent LP (combat skill/wyrd/whatever; possibly influenced by dummy quality), but it should also get damaged pretty fast by sparring with it, and need linen to repair. This would create a nice market for linen between farmers and warriors.