Okay, I have made a sampler before. I wove one when I first got my table loom to familiarise myself with it and working with four shafts. But this is the first sample I’ve done one for a project.

Why? I couldn’t decide which colour yarns to match with two of the three metallic yarns I want to use as borders of a shawl. Weaving a sample helped me work out which combinations appealed most.

The answer? Gold with the redder purple. Silver with the bluer purple.

What it has also told me is that the two purples and the navy look great together. Unfortunately, Bendigo Woollen Mills isn’t selling this yarn in 200 gram cones any more. You have to buy 500 gram cones. And at $35 a cone that makes multi-coloured projects a touch expensive.