Analytical

Since the Big Project is about choosing yarns appropriate for the final purpose of the cloth I decided that fabric samples alone were not going to be enough, that I would also have to include samples of the yarn used as well.

The question then became how to efficiently handle making lots of little bundles of yarn.  The obvious choice is to staple the bundles to the pages.  Yes, I could drill holes and lark's head them through the holes.  Anyone want to volunteer to spend the hundreds of hours that would take?  Anyone want to pay someone to do that?  Didn't think so.  :D  So, I will staple the bundles and those who want to lark's head instead are welcome to make that change.  I know of several people who pulled the staples from the samples in Magic and sewed them to the pages instead.  Makes perfect sense, especially if you live in a humid climate, but if I'd done that the book would have been over $1000, not the price I actually charged!  I ruled out glue because glue eventually dries out and then the samples fall off the pages.

Since the sectional beam was used to dress the loom I left the spools used on the rack.  Using one of my 6" wooden rulers as a guide I am tieing a knot in the end, then a knot every 6" or so.  I'm doing this in groups of 5 knots.  More than that and the length of 'string' becomes cumbersome to handle.  Once I've got all 30 groups done I'll cut them apart.  Then when I staple the samples to the page I'll also have all the little bundles ready to staple as well.

A 6" sample of the yarn might be a bit generous but yarn is cheap (relatively speaking) and I wanted people to get a good sample they could examine and even deconstruct if they wanted in order to better understand the properties of the yarn being used. 

The baby blanket samples are in the washing machine and the first batch are just now ready to go into the dryer.  Tomorrow I'll press those along with the place mats and tea towels I've managed to hem.  It feels good to see some real progress being made.