Hot take: I just finished my 200th hand-stitched book and realized I've used over 4 miles of linen thread.

It's a weird milestone that really hit me when I saw the giant spool I bought last year is almost empty, which makes me wonder if anyone else has ever calculated their total thread usage (or am I just a huge nerd for keeping that logbook)?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_ben1mo ago

Congrats on the milestone, but I have to point out that linen thread is usually sold by weight, not length, so your four mile estimate might be a bit off unless you did some serious math with the thread's thickness. Keeping a logbook is totally normal for this kind of craft, though, because you need to know when to reorder supplies. My own project notes are full of weird counts like that, which is half the fun of making things by hand. It turns a simple hobby into a kind of personal science experiment.

noah_black1mo agoTop Commenter

Oh, the "personal science experiment" part is so true. My friend got into making fishing nets by hand last year. His whole kitchen table was covered in little notes about loop counts and meters of cord per square foot. He spent a whole weekend just weighing a spool, then measuring out a tiny sample to figure out the length per gram. His estimate for his first net was so off he ended with enough leftover cord to basically make another one.