Some would say I waste too much time with my journals but I love writing in them and I love being able to go back and look at them. The garden journal is probably the one I go back to most often – at least this time of year. For example, I think I always think my tomatoes are taking longer to ripen “this” year and I can go back to last year’s journal and see when I got my first ripe tomato and even go back to 2022 to see when I got the first one then. The journals from Texas aren’t so useful now because of the difference in growing conditions. I alsooo keep track of the variety of beans I planted and when I planted them, when I harvested the first beans, etc. I also write when I fertilized, when we had our last frost and when we have our first frost.
This is the post where I discussed my 2024 journals except the stitching journal.
I’ve not been thrilled with my stitching journal. In previous years, I’ve used the Book of Days by Needlework Press and I’ve liked it but it isn’t exactly what I wanted. For 2024, I wanted to include everything that matters to me so I modified a Happy Planner book. You can read what all I did to it in this post.
That journal has become quite cumbersome so I’m making some changes for 2025. As I was thinking about what I really wanted, I decided that 5 years from now, I am not going to care how many stitches I made per day, why I didn’t stitch on May 24, which projects I took to Louisiana for a week. For those reasons, I am going to switch back to a smaller journal that I can keep right by my stitching chair, and only record the following:
- Starts – chart, linen, color changes, any other changes and date started. I will put a library card with all the needed info on the back of each framed piece once it’s fully finished.
- Finishes – Date finished.
- Charts I may want to buy that I see on flosstubes. I see so many charts I want to order and then if I wait a couple of weeks, they don’t seem so much like something I have to have so I will write down the name of the chart, the video where I saw it and the point in that video where it’s mentioned. That way I can go back and make a decision later.
- Monthly Goals – projects I would like to work on, projects I would like to start, projects I would like to finish.
That’s really all I plan to track for 2025.