It's the busy season at our company, so rather than drive myself crazy using every spare minute making inventory to stock my Etsy store, I have decided to use this time to experiment and learn. A machine knitting class series at the
Portland Sewing School has had me making swatches galore.
You only see a small bundle of them in the photo of the yarn tree below, but soon there will be patches of swatches choking the life blood out of that seven-foot tree.
There must be a better way to store swatches. Some people block them all and put each one in its own plastic protector sheet. All the sheets then go in a big old ring binder. This is the purist's method. It works best for those with plenty of time on their hands.
Others don't bother with blocking and just throw the swatches in a box or hang them on rings. The latter method is the approach you see here. Each sample has a little card-stock tag giving particulars on stitch techniques/hand manipulations used and machine settings.
(Confession: I also have some ring binders full of samples from several years ago when there was more time and also some binders that came to me from the previous owner of a couple of my machines.)
Soon all these swatches will be forming a union and will ask for a closet of their own. I might honor their wishes, but only to the extent that no additions have to be made to the studio.