Yarns & Palettes Group

Overview

The Yarns & Palettes and Sort Palette groups on the Yarns ribbon tab give you tools to manage your color palette and yarn data. These are the buttons between the Yarn Catalog on the left and the View tab on the right.

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Yarns & Palettes Group

Yarn Catalog Yarn Catalog

The Yarn Catalog is your gateway to thousands of real-world yarns and your personal yarn stash. It lives in a dockable panel on the right side of your workspace and has two tabs:

• Yarn Lines — A built-in, read-only catalog of commercial yarns with accurate colors, fiber content, sett recommendations, and more

• My Yarns — Your personal collection where you can add, edit, and organize your own yarns, track inventory, and build your stash library

From either tab, you can copy yarns directly into your project palette with a right-click.

Clear Palette

Removes unused colors from your palette. TempoWeave looks at which colors are actually assigned to warp threads and weft picks in your design, and removes any palette entries that aren't being used.

This is useful for cleaning up after importing a WIF file that came with a large palette, or after making significant color changes to a design. Only colors that appear in your Active Palette (actually in use) are kept.

If all colors in your palette are in use, TempoWeave will let you know and no changes are made.

Default Palette

Repopulates your palette with the default set of colors. This is helpful if you've cleared your palette or started with a limited color set and want a full range of colors to work with.

If you've configured a default yarn line in Settings, the Default Palette button will load colors from that yarn line instead of the built-in defaults. You can set your preferred default yarn line in File > Settings > Default Settings.

Export Yarns

Saves your My Yarns collection to an XML file. This creates a backup of all the suppliers, yarn lines, and colors you've added to the My Yarns tab of the Yarn Catalog.

Use this to:

• Back up your custom yarn data before reinstalling or updating

• Share your yarn collection with another weaver who uses TempoWeave

• Transfer your yarns to TempoWeave on a different computer

The exported file is saved in XML format with a default name of MyYarns_Backup.xml.

Import Yarns

Loads a previously exported My Yarns XML file into your Yarn Catalog. The imported yarns are added to your existing My Yarns collection.

Use this to restore a backup or to load yarns shared by another weaver. Select the XML file you want to import and TempoWeave will add all the suppliers, yarn lines, and colors it contains to your My Yarns tab.

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Sort Palette Group

The Sort Palette group controls how colors are displayed in the WIF Palette (the lower palette in the sidebar). Select a sort mode and the palette rearranges to match. This affects only the display order — it does not change your design or thread assignments.

Sorting is a quick way to find colors visually or to see your palette organized in a meaningful way.

Original

Displays colors in the order they were defined in the WIF file or added to the project. This is the default view and matches the palette index numbers shown in the design.

Hue

Sorts colors by their position on the color wheel — reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, and purples flow in natural order. Neutral colors (grays, blacks, whites) appear at the end.

This is useful for finding a specific color shade or seeing what hue range your palette covers.

Lightness

Sorts colors from lightest to darkest. This helps you see the value range of your palette and find colors of a particular lightness.

Color Family

Groups colors into families: reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, purples, and neutrals. Within each family, colors are sorted by lightness. This is similar to how paint chips are organized at a hardware store.

Warm to Cool

Arranges colors on a warm-to-cool spectrum. Warm colors (reds, oranges, yellows) appear first, followed by cool colors (greens, blues, purples). Neutrals are placed according to their warm or cool undertone.

This is particularly useful for weavers planning color temperature transitions in their designs.

Color Name

Sorts colors alphabetically by their assigned name. This is helpful when you've named your colors (for example, from a yarn catalog) and want to find a specific one quickly.

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Tips

• Clear Palette before sharing: If you're sharing a WIF file and want to keep it tidy, use Clear Palette to remove any colors that aren't part of the design.

• Sort doesn't affect your draft: Changing the sort order only changes how colors appear in the palette sidebar. Your threading, treadling, and color assignments remain exactly as they are.

• Export regularly: If you've spent time building up your My Yarns collection, export a backup periodically. It only takes a moment and can save hours of re-entry.

• Default Palette for new projects: If you accidentally clear too many colors or want a fresh start, Default Palette gives you a full set of colors to work with immediately.