Regarding my upcoming online tapestry class...

So I have stoked the fires of student interested in tapestry classes online and have found myself not ready for the class to go live yet! I have been happily setting up a new studio and putting together new in-person workshops, but have not yet pulled together all the technology needed for online teaching. I am getting close though. I have purchased all the programs I need and the online platform... I just lack the video platform. So at this point the tech part of it is coming together, but there are still many (many) videos needing to be shot and edited. This is a very time-intensive process.

Honestly, I wasn't really sure there would be that much interest in online tapestry classes, but I believe that I was wrong on this front. People are interested.

So if you have been patiently waiting for more information about learning tapestry online, the class I am working on is a beginning tapestry class called Warp and Weft: Learning the Structure of Tapestry. The class includes information and practice of the most important tapestry techniques as well as lots of tips that you learn in workshops but never find in books. I have a new page on my website devoted to online learning and you can find it HERE. There is some preliminary information about the format of the class.

Here are a few questions about yarn for online classes... and the family sociologist is going to roll her eyes when she reads this as I am certainly not a survey designer! And these questions are for people who are actually interested in taking an online tapestry class at some point. You can email me at rebecca (dot) mezoff (at) gmail (dot) com or reply in the comments. At some point it occurred to me that for a beginning tapestry techniques class, it is helpful to have a specified yarn and warp. This yarn kit would take care of that.

1. Would you purchase yarn for the class if it was offered as a kit? This would ensure, especially for beginning students, that the warp and weft will work together and you won't be frustrated by a disconnect between sizes of yarn and warp sett. (I do not plan to in any way "require" students to use my yarn. There are many yarns out there that work very well for tapestry.)
2. Would you purchase the yarn even if there were only two or three different colorways for the available kits? There might be 8 colors in each kit. As an example (but I am not committing myself to these!), one colorway of bright colors, one of seaside pastels, one of desert varnish colors.
3. Considering the incredible amount of effort it is to dye and package small amounts of yarn for such a kit, would you be willing to pay between $45 and $55 for a kit that included 8 different colors in small amounts (approximately 1 ounce skeins)? The kit would also include some small incidentals needed for the class and potentially even warp. (plus gross receipts tax. See the "dba" blog post for reasons on that... and of course postage.)
4. Alternatively, would you prefer to get a list of suppliers for yarn that will work for the class or just experiment with whatever you have? 

These are the skeins I'm talking about, except the ones pictured here are only 6/10ths of an ounce and I am proposing a whole ounce--about twice this much yarn. Aren't they adorable? This is singles yarn however and for the beginning class I will use Harrisville Highland. It isn't QUITE so cute, but almost. For future color gradation classes I am considering small skeins of the singles yarn (which are exactly as cute as the ones in this picture).

The yarn kits actually happening depends on me purchasing an electric skein winder. There is no other way for all that yarn to make it into skein form to be dyed. It just can't happen. So I'd like to know if there is interest in buying yarn in small amounts for the classes before I invest in another  piece of equipment and dyeing time.