Documenting dyeing

I've been rather resistant to documenting my dyeing escapades beyond posting in my blog. Then I KonMarie'd my kitchen, which created an empty cupboard that immediately filled up with hand spun yarn and the results of my dyeing experiments. However, the cupboard didn't seem like an improvement over keeping all that fiber in big plastic bags in a bedroom closet. I decided to bite the bullet and create a notebook of dye samples.

The first step (after purchasing some file folders from Office Depot) was to figure out just how much hand dyed yarn I had. I hauled it all out to the dining room, then searched the blog for digital documentation. Wow. That's a lot of dyeing.

I have the necessary hole-punching tools, plus a paper cutter, so I cut up the file folders to be about half the size of a piece of notebook paper and punched away. Most of the skeins had to be unwound at least partway, to get an 8" sample to attach; in the future, I will leave a bit hanging loose to eliminate this step.

I didn't want to duplicate all the details of each dye session, so I kept jottings to a minimum while including the blog post date for future reference. I chose not to list the yarn's location because that tends to change from time to time. Also, I didn't worry about making it look pretty.

For yarns dyed in workshops, I inserted handouts. If I had notes from my own dyeing episodes, I taped them to notebook paper and included them. Then I made a corny cover for the three-ring binder.

In order to avoid having to squint at the little tags attached to the skeins, I made a big tag for each set. While I may have to empty a shelf or two to find the yarn I am looking for, this system should save me time and effort.

The little tags on each skein indicate the weight and yardage. It might be useful to have that recorded somewhere (Ravelry?) to reference during project planning, but that seems like a lot of extra work. I've already used some of my hand dyed, for a tapestry sampler. Maybe after another project or two, I'll change my mind.

Once I am done with the hand dyed, I plan to do something similar with the hand spun.

Do you document your fiber projects?