Booking Through Thursday-Journals

Booking Through Thursday

• A couple weeks ago, we asked about how you take care of your books, with one of the questions asking whether you write in your books. Well, what about books that are meant to be written in? Like, say, a journal or diary? Do you keep one? Obviously, if you're answering this, you have a blog--do you just let your blog be your journal? Or do you also keep one for private stuff also?

I do keep a journal..or rather, several. I always have a notepad and paper nearby, at work, for jotting work-related notes (work on speaker packet) and for personal notes (banana bread, COC interview, lesson poster). Those personal notes, if particularly...noteworthy, often get stuck in my purse-journal. This journal hangs out with me everyday. I stick it in my knitting bag (a handbag my mom knit and felt for me, always has a sock-in-progress in it) and it mostly stays in the car throughout my workday. On a sunny day, I go out, get my knitting and my journal and find a sunny bench to lunch at; writing, eating and/or knitting. This journal is filled with sketches, post-its, lists, ideas, quotes, musings and questions. It's not a pretty art journal or something deep and meaningful...it's just my thoughts, as they come to me.

I have a "business" notebook that I started when Blonde Chicken Boutique was a nameless, shapeless enterprise. It's a basic, smallish, wirebound hardcover notebook with lined paper and made-by-me pockets on the covers. It's filled with all of business name ideas, logo sketches, lists of things to do, timelines, goals and the most comprehensive business plan I have. When I get inspired about a new direction/goal/idea, I still turn to this notebook, so all my ideas are in one place.
Then there's my knitting notebook...my design notebook. I bought it at the Book Loft with my best friend, because the illustrations cracked me up and I loved the variety of paper it offered me. It collects tearsheets of sweater designs I like; sketches of designs; notes about gauge, needle size, stitch patterns; copies of stitch patterns I've found in library or bookstore books; charts. This journal would make no sense to the non-knitter. It's not in chronological order..but rather split up between the three kinds of paper in the book (lined, charted, blank). I make sketches and tape pictures onto the blank pages, chart stitch patterns and gauge swatches on the charted pages and actually write the pattern on the lined pages. Well, I don't really write out the pattern, I take notes on what I do and then sit down on the computer to write the pattern out.
I have a shelf full of old journals from various times in my life. Junior year of college/2003 was a big journaling year: my mom bought a thick 8x6 notebook for me and I wrote in it daily. Maybe I write more (often and length) in thicker books...like I have to fill them up in a reasonable time. I also have kept a few travel journals, most notably from Maryland Sheep and Wool: me and the 3 friends I went with each kept a journal (slim 10 page, softcover, staple-bound book with construction paper cover) and created a page in everyone else's journal.
I journal because my mind is slippery..I'm always reading good books, finding great quotes, struck with design inspiration and in a matter of seconds *poof*, I can't remember! The journals are my net, keeping those 3am thoughts safe, becoming an index of books I've read, inspiration found and tears shed.