Friday 27 July 2012

Labels

In this game, labels are important, everything needs a label. When I'm at shows those labels are important because some people are after certain fibre combinations, or need to avoid certain fibres.
Even in the online shop, labels are important, if stuff isn't clearly labelled it's all too easy for someone to be sent the wrong thing. (Yes it has happened, but it all gets put right, with huge apologies, we're human, and my lovely customers are very understanding about mistakes)

For ages I've used full size business cards as labels on everything. They work, they're not expensive, but I didn't like the company I was getting them from (I won't name names, but I bet you can work it out). They didn't print the cards in the UK, which is important to me. Hole punching and threading tags on to plaits of fibre is also an absolute pain, if you have 50 to label, it's one of those fiddly annoying jobs that leaves you muttering and swearing at the end of it!

I decided there had to be a better solution. There was a post on the Knitty blog a while ago about labelling skeins of handspun using tyvek wristbands, and I had a lightbulb moment. What would work for skeins of handspun, would work for braids of fibre. They come with a sticky strip so no more hold punching and threading, and I can get them custom printed by a UK based small business. There's also no danger of them ripping off. It you want to use them as a tag for your finished skein you still can, you can either slide it off as a loop, or cut and hole punch like a regular tag.



That just left the rest of the fibre, all the things that you really can't put tag like this on...
I've ummed and ahhhed for a few weeks trying to decide what to do, and I've decided to switch to a smaller, full colour, British printed, using trees from sustainable sources, card. They're more expensive than my old cards, but so are the wristbands, and I feel so much happier about using them, and the new company.



So look out for the new cards, and labels, I hope you like them.