12/15/03: To keep skeined threads neat after you cut open the skein, take plastic soda straws, preferably clear, cut a section about 1/2 inch, slice it open and round off the edges. Open it up with your fingers and put this around your threads to keep them in some sort of skein form. This will keep the strands together without knotting. You can use a few of them on your cut lengths to keep the ends from getting all knotted. You can't keep 30 strands together this way but it works for smaller amounts.

If you use a waterproof pen, a Pilot sc-uf or something similar to mark photos or glass, you can write a color number on the plastic soda straw.