Keeping a fiber notebook can be a wonderful tool in your exploration of fiber, yet many people do not keep fiber notebooks because they find them too tedious to keep up. I have spent many years of my life as a scientist, and I have learned some valuable rules that I follow when keeping a notebook.
Don't worry about how pretty your notebook is. This is the number one reason people start and then abandon a notebook. They want it to be a gorgeous document for posterity to admire. A notebook is a tool for gathering useful information in a central location. Don't worry whether it's going to win the best-designed notebook award. Don't be afraid to mar your pretty journal by less-than-perfect entries. If you absolutely must have a fancy journal, keep an everyday working journal and then transfer all the important stuff into the pretty one at your leisure. Chances are you'll find the working journal so useful you won't get around to a pretty version.
Stick everything in the notebook. Some people try to keep separate notebooks or filing systems for different aspects of a project. I like to just tape everything into my notebook. That means when I go to a fiber show and I gather people's business cards, they go in the notebook. If I buy a fleece, the information about where I got it goes in the notebook, a sample of the fleece goes in the notebook, notes about how I washed it or spun it go in the notebook, swatches and samples go in the notebook.
Don't duplicate effort. If you have a piece of paper stating what you bought, whether it's a tag from the item, a business card or just a scrap of paper that someone wrote their phone number on, slap it right in the notebook! If you save it until later to write it neater or in a certain format, you'll often lose the paper, forget to do it or just plain never get around to it.
Use your notebook for ideas. My notebook gets sketches of things I'm designing, notes on spinning ideas, lists of ideas for Spindlicity, schemes and dreams, and inspirational pictures I cut out from magazines or wherever.
Use your notebook for planning. I keep swatches of colors in my notebook, I keep swatches of yarns I've knit up, butterflies of yarn I've spun, calculations and information about where everything came from all on the same page. When I complete a project, I stick a photo of it on that page too. Each page is a work in progress. Feel free to go back to a page and add stuff later as the project progresses.
Most importantly, keep your notebook handy. When you start a project, get in the habit of noting it down. You'll find that when you get back to that project days, weeks or years later, you'll have a much better idea of what you were doing and where you were going. Better still, when you start a new project, you can look back at an old project's notes and you won't have to reinvent the wheel.
So try out a fiber notebook and see how useful it can be. Drop us an and tell us how it works for you!
