What a night book is actually counting
Cloth meters, stops, and a signature are not the same kind of fact. A night book in a Bangkok weaving shed usually mixes all three in one column.
Field notes
What the books are doing before anyone draws them
Short accounts from visits: how meters get written, how a shade card drifts, and why a stop mark is a blunt instrument.
When the shade card and the vat note disagree
A lot can look right beside the vat and wrong on the buyer’s table. The card, the lamp, and the hour of the batch all belong in the ledger.
Seconds beside the cutting table
The pile at the end of the table mixes weaving faults, cutting mistakes, and pieces nobody wrote a slip for. A month-end argument needs those split apart.
A stop is not always a warp break
Night books often use one mark for every time a loom went quiet. Fitters and weavers are not served by the same mark.