I’m Eileen Foley, and this blog documents development of my capstone project for the 2019 Webs Expert Knitters certification Program (WEKP), a requirement for completion of the WEKP program.
And yes, I know, my journal is supposed to be a physical notebook stuffed with swatches and sketches and hand-written notes, and another blog just adds to the vast digital wasteland, not to mention being kinda 2010. But if you had to wade through six-months of my dodgy spelling, cross-outs, editing bubbles and arrows, not to mention handwriting so atrocious even I can’t read it, you might feel that in my case, it’s a worthwhile trade-off.
I love a crisp new journal (with a really nice pen) as well as anyone, maybe too well, as I own a stack of them I can’t quite bring myself to mess up by actually writing in them (or inspiration strikes just as the dog has repurposed that really nice pen as a chew toy). I bought one specially for this project (see photo). On paper I need know what I mean to say and it what order before I start — on a blog, and can dive right in, start in the middle, add, delete, revise, and it doesn’t end up looking like and unreadable mess. Plus, I can post photos from my phone, hyperlink to things I want to keep track of, and post on my lunch hour without having to cram anything else into my overstuffed work bag.
I’ve realized that I prefer journaling digitally over physically for much the same reason I’ve come to prefer knitting to sewing — unlimited do-overs (and spellcheck). Once that fabric is cut, options narrow dramatically, but if the knitting isn’t looking quite right, or doesn’t fit, I can almost always rip and re-knit.