29th Year Blanket as Journal Project

I am horrible at keeping a journal. I love buying them, but I never write in them. Every year, I try to start one, and every year I write faithfully for a week or two, get busy, forget about it...and then a month goes by, and then two, and then it seems pointless to start again.

However, I think I have thought of something that will work for me. Instead of writing in a journal, I will crochet a row on my blanket. I have purchased 11 skeins of yarn in the blue and green family. Green has always been a favorite color, and I have been very into aquas and teals lately. I'm also considering tossing in a couple coral colors as well for a bit of a pop.

My plan is to crochet a single row at a time (every day, every other day, when the mood strikes) in the color that most speaks to me in how I'm feeling at that moment. My original plan was to assign a different emotion to each color, but I realized that I'm pretty even-keeled and my emotions don't change all that much. This seemed like a better way to go about it. Each day (rather, each time I sit down to crochet), I make a note in my phone about what color I chose and why. Here are some examples from the last three days:

11:17pm on May 4, 2013: Officially 29...feeling peaceful and content with life. Celestial Blue - ocean and tropical blue skies.

May 5: Cinco de Mayo, hot weather, dinner with family. Sage - Mexican patterned tiles.

May 6: Tied with Phoenix for hottest major city at 87 degrees, major headache. White - hot!

Simple, easy, quick. As I crochet, I think about the day and the emotions I'm feeling. I pray about things that happened. I remember to be grateful for the good things in life. I relax.

As for the pattern, I have chosen a ripple pattern from this book in a stitch called "feather and fan". It's a lot of counting to three, but it is an easy pattern once you get started. I've already found one mistake (I didn't add enough increases to one of the "hills"), and the perfectionist in me is hating it, but imperfection is part of life, and I have decided to keep it in there as a reminder that it's okay to not be perfect. I just fudged around with the stitches in the next row to make it work.

 

My hope is that when I am done with this blanket, I will have a visual representation of my 29th year. I won't have to try to express my private thoughts through words, and I won't have to worry about people finding and reading them. Instead, I can express them through stitches, which to the world at large will look like a simple ripple blanket, but to me will represent the events, and emotions of the last year of my 20's. 

 

Care to join me on this journey?

 

Note: If I were to do one row for each of the next 362 days, that would be a mighty long blanket, so I am considering the possibility of making two, three or even four blankets, depending upon how dedicated I stay throughout the year. I will keep you updated.