Journal Knitting

The secret to happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life
and in elevating them to art.
-William Morris

The purpose of journal knitting is to create a graphic representation of a written journal tracking personal growth over a season in your life. This project will encourage you to carve out a few minutes each day to stop, look up from your screen, get off the treadmill, step away from the tidal wave of tasks and examine yourself. Even if you have sixteen WIPs on your needles, I think you will find that there is something special about the focus and intention of journal knitting.

I probably don’t have to convince you of the many therapeutic benefits of knitting. The studies are real and the resounding evidence is easy to find with just a little research. But we Knitters already know that our practice is meditative, community building, and mentally engaging. It promotes intentionality and mindfulness. It is a practical, useful, self-expressive art that provides a way to stay connected to the legacy of conventional wisdom.

Process vs. Product

There is value in the process and the product. It’s hard to imagine any other project that is more process-focussed than conceptual knitting. The goal is not only to be happy with the final product but to be engaged and self-aware in the process of knitting it. Conceptual knitting is not new. Over the last decade, there have been several popular patterns making the rounds: The Sky scarf, Temperature blanket, and Advent Scarf are just a few. Journal Knitting just takes the concept of knitting what we observe in the world around us and turns it inward, making it more personal.

Written Word vs Knitted Stitches

I believe that the written journal is equally important to the knitted stitches. They have two different purposes. The written word gives you the gift of detail about your time, and the knitted stitches show you a graphic snapshot of that season.

Decisions, Decisions...

Before you begin you will need to make a few decisions. Decide what you want to track and assign parameters for yourself. Make it personal. You are in control of this journey. Be sure to write the parameters down in your journal so that you can refer back to them as time progresses. Make a commitment to yourself to see this journey through to the end.

Supplies

Commitment
Time
A tracking focus
Journal and pen
Pattern
Yarn
Needles
Stitch markers
Row counter

Duration

Decide how long you want this project to last. One year is an obvious choice but think of other periods or seasons that you may want to track and document. Do you have a fitness goal before a vacation? Are you in training for a marathon? Are you expecting a new baby? Are you in treatment for a specific health concern? Are you working toward graduation? All of these seasons have one thing in common; they all have an end date. Your journal may be a record of your feelings during this time of anticipation.

Annual projects could take one entire calendar year, but they could also last from birthday to birthday to give a personal snapshot of that particular trip around the sun. Choose any important day to start, or just commit to starting today and end on this day a year from now. The choice is yours!

What to Track

You could track practically anything under the sun, but here are a few ideas to help you get started.

Health & Fitness
Grief
Anger
Anxiety
Sobriety
Medical concerns
Travel
Gestation
Kindness
Spiritual Growth
Gratitude & Joy
Emotions
Seasons
Curiosity (my personal favorite!)

Positive vs. Negative

There are two basic ways to look at what you track. This decision will ultimately be determined by what your goal is in this project, but it can have a profound impact on what you get out of it in the end. What is your focus? Are you documenting in stitches the days that you accomplished your goal (positive reward), or are you tracking the days that you struggled or failed (negative)? Tracking the negative isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You may just find that it provides accountability in your goal and an honest interpretation of that season.

Assigning Colors

My best advice to you would be to keep it simple! Try not to overcomplicate things. Set clear assignments. Think of this as the paper and pencil for your journal. You may be tempted to assign lots of colors for lots of different emotions, and that’s ok, this is your journal after all, but it may make things more complicated and more difficult to stick with. You will have plenty of space to write in detail about your day in your journal. The knitted journal is meant to be a graph of your progress or a picture of your life during that season. I would recommend choosing one main color and no more than three accent colors to track specific activities or feelings. The simplest approach is to decide on a tracking focus, answer the question that this focus asks, and assign one color to the answer.

An example of a negative tracking focus: anxiety or depression. Your question may be: Did I have a dark day? If your answer is yes, then marl your accent color with your main color. If your answer is no, then just knit in the main color.

An example of the same focus but in a positive way: anxiety or depression. Your question may be: Did I find some joy today, take good care of myself and kick my fears to the curb? If your answer is yes, then marl the accent color and main color together. Knit in the main color alone for no. You will have either a graph of your triumphs or an honest memorial of your struggles at the end of the journey. Both have tremendous value.

Color Duality

Colors can have more than one meaning.
What does red speak to you? Is it passionate? Loving? Angry?
Does blue give you the blues, or does it represent peace?
Is green envy or tranquility? Is it just your favorite color?
Is yellow energetic but looks terrible on you?
Is black depressing or stable? Or does it simply provide great contrast like ink on a page?

Choose colors that you like and that mean something to you. You could choose to stick with traditional color psychology interpretations, but in the end, this is your journal. Choose a palette that works for you and that you will actually enjoy during the process as well as in the final product!

Contrast, Value, & Compliments

Contrast is key! Would you keep a journal using dark purple paper and black ink? Or a highly patterned paper? You could, but you may have difficulty reading it later. Your knitting journal is no different. Make your color decisions based on what you can see easily. Highly variegated yarns are beautiful but may hide your pattern and contrast colors if not chosen carefully. Colors of similar value may be pleasing but will fall flat when used together in this way. The goal here is the opposite of fading. You want to find colors that contrast boldly just like paper and ink.

Contrast can be chosen in two basic ways: value and compliment. Think of value as how much color or pigment is in the yarn. Black is the highest value and white is the lowest. Think pale and dark. Pastel and highly saturated.

Compliment speaks to the relationship between colors. Complementary colors are opposites on the color wheel. Compliments bring out the most in each other because they do not contain any of each other. Green makes red look its reddest because green contains no red. It is made up of the other two primary colors, blue and yellow. Conversely, red does not appear to be as bold sitting next to purple or orange because purple contains red and blue, and orange contains red and yellow. Your brain sees the red in the purple and orange and interprets the red as less bold.

There are three main sets of compliments made up by the primary and secondary colors: Red & Green, Blue & Orange, and Yellow & Purple.

Color Wheel demonstrating complimentary pairs.

Any tint or shade of these combinations will work together and provide contrast. Red and green don’t have to be Christmas-strong. Pale pink and olive green, or hot pink and lime green could also be in scope. Orange and blue don’t have to scream college football mascot. Pale aqua and bright orange, or Navy and coral would work too.

Try this trick to check the value of your choices before you start. Place your choices side by side in a well-lit area, take a picture of them and turn it into a black and white photo. If you can see the difference in value between them then you are in good shape.

Pattern

Choose one that will work with this concept and meet your skill level. Make sure the final product is something that you would actually want to wear! Dense stitch patterns work best for long projects. These could be anything from simple garter stitch to linen stitch or other slipped-stitch patterns. Patterns knit in the round also lend themselves well to this because one round a day can be knit instead of down and back (technically two rows) of flat patterns. The Archive Loop is a great pattern to start you down this path.

Yarn

Lighter weight yarns like lace or fingering will be more size and cost-effective. Choose a lace weight yarn to marl with fingering weight. Adding the lace weight should not affect the overall gauge enough to substantially alter the finished size. Gauging is vital! Take time to gauge a week or two’s worth of pattern and measure and multiply that by the length of time you assign. A beautiful open lace stitch may be appealing, but you may end up with a 16-foot long scarf at the end of the year! Save that pretty lace pattern for something with a shorter time assignment. On the other hand, if you only assign a month or two to this endeavor, you will need to increase the number of rows you knit each day to accomplish the desired size within the time frame. Calculate how much yarn will be required to complete the entire project and purchase all of the yarn in advance.

What to Write

That’s simple! Anything and everything you feel, experience, hope, dread, or realize about the season you are in. Just be sure to answer the focus question that applies to your project.

Making up for lost time

The goal here is to write in your journal every day and transfer that day into knit stitches.
Every Day.
Faithfully.
But let’s be real folks! Life happens. I would encourage you to at least write a sentence or two, or even a word or two, every day in your journal. If you don’t have time to knit that day because the sky is falling down around your ears then make it up the next day or the next. Don’t let yourself get more than a week out from your knitting. Otherwise, you lose the contemplative, meditative focus of this process. That being said, leave yourself some room for grace. Commitment is more desirable than perfection here.

I hope you enjoy the journey!