In my opinion, the hardest part of anything is record keeping, and it’s a very important part of natural dyeing if you want any idea how you did something after the fact. I recently did a bunch of experimental dyeing for a native and invasive species project. Looking at all of those yarns and the few not very helpful notes I had taken, I realized I needed a better system moving forward.
The first thing I needed to do was take much better notes on the weight of my fiber, the weight of my dye material, times, temperatures, pH, and the concentration of any after-treatments. As for the samples and notes I did have, I needed a better way to store and keep track of them. I decided to make binder pages with holes punched in the side to thread the yarn through. This works well for storing dyed yarns and leaves room for my notes.
I think this is a good start for improving my organization and note-taking systems. Now I just need to keep up with it!
