At some point in your knitting career, you will have made more projects than you can remember. Most experienced knitters love coming up with their own patterns and customizing commercial patterns to fit themselves and their loved ones.
Some knitters become aspiring knitwear designers, constantly on the hunt for the perfect shape, the perfect yarn to craft the perfect pattern for the next project on their portfolios.
And, of course, coming up with the perfect formula to craft the perfect garment is no small feat. Most knitters have to do a lot of test swatches and make small adjustments to the stitches here and there to find the right mix between pattern, gauge, size, shape, and yarn.
That’s where a knitting journal comes in handy.
Think of it as a recipe book for your knitting projects, where you record all of your knitting projects and ways that you customize them to your liking so that in the future if you plan on replicating the garment or even sell your pattern, you will have all of your notes, ready to go.
What makes the best knitting journal? The best knitting journal has space for all the information you need to create or record your project: yarn type/color/dye lot, needle size, gauge, pattern & notes, and even a sketch/photo. Graph paper for charts is also a key feature to look for.
Knitting journals can certainly include more information as well as guides to stitches, abbreviations, taking measurements, etc. The exact inclusions are a matter of preference; just be sure you have space for the notes you want to include.
Read on to learn all about the wonderful world of knitting journals. We’ll also share some of the very best journals on the market. Keep reading and happy knitting!
How to Use a Knitting Journal
Trust us when we say that there are no rules on how to use a knitting journal – you can include whatever information is the most useful to you.
You can purchase a knitting journal with prompts and sections for things like yarn used, gauge, modifications for different sizes, etc. Some knitting journals even come with helpful guides for yarn weights and needle sizes, as well as graphing paper to help you draft your own pattern.
Some knitting journals even double as swatch books, which allow you to attach the test swatches of your project, which will serve as helpful guides if you want to adjust the size or material in the future.
You can even use a blank journal and customize it, similar to how you would use a bullet journal.
If you are crafting a project from scratch, we recommend documenting the project from start to finish, including any mistakes that you make along the way, so you can draft the perfect pattern. You can even cut out different yarn samples and attach them to your knitting journal.
We’ve also seen some beautiful knitting journal spreads where knitters attach photos of the swatch and the completed project, which is quite helpful when you want to remember all the different projects that you have finished.
What Makes a Great Knitting Journal?
Whether you want to purchase a knitting journal or want to customize your own, here are some information that would be helpful to include in each project:
- Inspiration for the project or the occasion you’re making the project for (Christmas, baby shower, etc.)
- Final measurements of the project
- Yarn used (brand, material, weight)
- Needle size and type
- Gauge
- Step by step pattern (if you are modifying a commercial pattern, you can attach the pattern and note down any modifications for your project)
- Pattern chart (especially for complicated colorwork or cable patterns)
- Care instructions
- Photos or sketches of the design for easy reference
- And anything else that you’d like!
With a knitting journal, you are allowed to be as creative as you’d like and include anything that you think is relevant to the project. If you are making a knitting journal for personal use, it can serve as something to look back on and be proud of after a year (or a few months) of knitting.
As an added bonus, most knitting journals are not actually too knitting-specific. If you are a multi-crafter who likes to crochet sometimes, too, you can log your hook-work easily in your knitting journal, too!
9 Best Knitting Journals
If you are convinced that you need a knitting journal, let us walk you through some of the best offers on the market:
| Rank | Product | Best Feature |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Vogue® Knitting Project Journal | Tips, guides & templates included |
| 2. | My Knitting Project Journal: Stressful Day Knit Away | Document up to 90 projects |
| 3. | The Ultimate Knitting Planner | Multiple sections with directory |
| 4. | Get Knit Done: Knitting Project Planner | Knitting abbreviation guide |
| 5. | My Knitting Journal (Val Pierce) | Reference charts on the inside cover |
| 6. | Knitting Journal | Room for yarn labels/samples |
| 7. | My Knitting Journal | Simple, but charming format |
| 8. | Knitting Project Log Book and Pattern Recorder | Separate project log and pattern drafting sections |
| 9. | Knitting Planner | Just the basics (no frills) |
Any one of these knitting journals will help you feel like a real professional crafter, but just as one’s needles are precious, so is one’s journal!
Let’s look at each one of these in detail to help you pick the very best for your crafting needs.
1. Vogue® Knitting Project Journal
If you are buying your very first knitting project journal, then The Vogue Knitting Project Journal is definitely a must-have.
Whether you are a beginner, an experienced knitter, or a professional knitwear designer, this knitting journal can act as a helpful guide, reference book, and journal to help you document your knitting projects.
We love, love, love all of the guides that are included in this journal, so you never have to open another reference book to find what you need. There are instructions for taking body measurements and altering your patterns, as well as some standard sizes for children, women, and men (which even has some plus-size options as well).
Experienced knitters can benefit from all of the instructions that help them alter a commercial pattern to fit better, as well as the detailed instructions and references to help them draft stitch and colorwork patterns and sketch out schematics.
The journal comes with 25 project templates, which include essential information like yarn, needles, gauge, measurements, and notions. Next to the project page, you can find knitter’s graph paper, which acts as a helpful guide to help you draft complicated stitch patterns, sketch out your ideas or even attach a photo of your finished project.
If you are a knitwear designer, you can also benefit from having this journal in your craft bag. The journal includes dot grid pages that allow you to sketch your design and draw schematics and knitters’ graphing paper where you can write your pattern (with helpful instructions for common stitches and cable symbols).
If you love doing colorwork, you will also love the inclusion of colorwork graph paper, which allows you to map out your color pattern and have a clearer idea of how the pattern will look when it is completely knitted. This is a useful addition that can save knitwear designers a lot of time and energy while figuring out a colorwork pattern.
2. My Knitting Project Journal: Stressful Day Knit Away
This journal is part knitting journal and part reference guide. If you hate looking up needle conversion charts or yarn weight charts every time you knit, this journal comes with all the helpful references to make knitting so much easier.
On the first few pages, you will find references for needle sizes, yarn weight explanations, gauges and recommended needle sizes, common pattern abbreviations, etc.
Most knitters need to open a reference book or look up charts on the internet, so these guides are tremendously helpful if you just need a quick reference.
In the journal section, you will find enough pages to help you document up to 90 knitting projects. There are prompts for project details like yarn, gauge, needle size, which makes finding the project and making a new garment much quicker in the future.
If you want to sketch out your own ideas and attach samples of yarn and photos of your project, the journal also offers plenty of space for that. Whether you are opening this journal for references or note down your ideas, it can be useful in your craft bag for a long time to come.
3. The Ultimate Knitting Planner
This Ultimate Knitting Planner is a great addition to your craft bag if you want to organize not just your knitting projects but your needles collection and your yarn stash as well.
The journal is divided into several sections: Project Log, Project Details, Pattern Writing, Yarn Inventory, and Needle Inventory. The first page offers a “directory” to help you easily find each section.
The project log and project details section allow you to document up to 60 knitting projects, with all the basic information that you need to refresh your memory and come back to the project when you need.
Knitwear designers will find the Pattern Writing section quite helpful because it includes graph pages to help you draft your pattern and map out complicated patterns and sketches.
Our favorite feature has to be the Yarn Inventory and Needle Inventory section, which allows you to keep track of all the yarn and needles in your collection.
Knowing which yarn brand, material, and color you have, as well as how many skeins are in your yarn stash, will allow you to plan your projects better and keep the colors consistent.
4. Get Knit Done: Knitting Project Planner
This Knitting Project Planner is another great option if you want to keep track of all of your projects, sketch out new ideas, and organize your yarn stash.
The first few pages is all about organizations, where you can take stock of your yarn and note down how many skeins of yarn you have of each brand, fiber, weight, and dye lot.
Then, before you get to the project pages, you can find references for common stitch abbreviations, which helps you read and understand patterns and even note down your own ideas.
There are 75 project tracker pages, which means you have a lot of room to jot down ideas, note down all of the details, and instructions for future use. Each project template is accompanied by a blank graph paper page, so you can write your own patterns, add sketches and even attach photos.
If you want a simple yet effective way to document your knitting projects, we highly recommend this knitting journal.
5. My Knitting Journal (Val Pierce)
This knitting journal is designed for experienced knitters who just want a place to document their knitting projects and keep track of everything knitting-related.
There are some basic reference charts that are conveniently printed on the inside covers, so you can check them whenever you need them. The reference guide includes basic information on how to measure gauge, common abbreviations, etc.
For knitters who love buying and organizing yarn, there are helpful pages that help you keep track of your yarn stash. If you find a yarn you love, of course, you want to note down the brand, the material, and where you bought the yarn.
This step is especially important if you want to keep track of colors and dye lots since the colors can vary depending on the dye lot. You definitely don’t want to use different shades of the same color in the same project!
Of course, the journal also comes with templates that can help you document all of your knitting projects, including information on yarn, needle size, gauge, measurements, and any alterations you make along the way.
Next to the template page, you can find knitters’ graphing paper that comes in handy when you need to note down complicated stitch patterns or sketch out your ideas. Keeping your projects organized would also be helpful if you plan on selling your creations or your patterns.
We love the pink theme and how organized the pages are, so you can easily find what you need whenever you need it. This journal is a standard 6” by 8”, so you can easily keep it in your project bag and find it whenever you need to.
6. Knitting Journal
If you are a beginner or intermediate knitter who loves following commercial patterns, this basic knitting journal is a great place to keep a running log of everything you made.
When you first learn how to knit big projects like sweaters or afghans, noting down the different techniques, gauge, and yarn used can be helpful to help you understand how to craft a garment. If you often start projects but don’t have the motivation to finish them, this knitting journal is a great way to keep yourself accountable.
This knitting journal allows you to take notes on your project, like yarn, needles, gauge, measurements, and any alterations you make when you knit. This is a great way to remember your projects and help make future projects a bit faster since you can easily access all of your notes.
You can attach the yarn samples to each project. There is even a dedicated spot in each project spread where you can sketch out your project and attach photos of the finished project, so you can refer back to it later on and feel proud of everything you’ve made.
Since the information on the template is quite basic, we recommend this knitting journal for beginner knitters who can use it as a learning device.
7. My Knitting Journal
At first, this knitting journal can attract you with all of its beautiful illustrations and whimsical design.
When you start to use the journal, you will find that this is a one-stop-shop that allows you to note down up to 60 knitting projects, which means that you can use this knitting journal for a while – even years.
This knitting journal would best serve those who love following commercial patterns and make small and basic alterations. The project templates allow you to note down the essential details for your projects, including the pattern, yarn, needles, gauge, etc.
We love the reserved section that allows you to attach yarn samples, as well as the blank frame where you can sketch out your project or attach photos of the completed design. The first few pages allow you to index all of your projects, so you can easily find them when you need to find a reference.
We recommend this knitting journal for beginners and intermediate knitters who want a place to remember all of their projects and a motivational tool that encourages them to be more creative and start new projects to add to their portfolios.
8. Knitting Project Logbook and Pattern Recorder
This Knitting Project Logbook is helpfully divided into two sections, a project pages section and a pattern drafting pages section, which can benefit beginners and advanced knitters alike.
In the project pages section, you can find templates to document all of your finished and ongoing knitting projects. You can find basic information on the pattern, the yarn and dye lot, needles, etc. You can even attach samples of yarn and photos of the completed project for easy reference.
This section can host up to 35 knitting projects, so you can easily fit a whole year of knitting in this logbook, if not more. If you decide to come back to any patterns in the future, you can find them and access all of your notes to make knitting the project a bit easier.
If you are an advanced knitter or knitwear designer, you can benefit from the second section of the logbook. When you craft a pattern, there is a lot of experimentation and small adjustments that you need to do. This section offers ample space for you to note down all of the details when you draft a new pattern.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a pattern drafting section without knitters’ graph paper and blank spaces for all of your sketches. You can draft your ideas, note measurements, and adjustments, and plan out complicated stitches with the graph paper.
If you love knitting and making new knitting patterns, this Knitting Project Log Book definitely has everything you need to document your expertise and enrich your portfolio of knitting patterns.
9. Knitting Planner
If you are a minimalist who just wants something clean and straightforward to document your knitting projects, this knitting planner has a clean and organized design to make each project spread look nice without much effort.
The clean lines and white spaces allow your notes and sketches to shine. Each project template includes all of the necessary prompts that you need to document your project, including the project’s name, occasion, start and end date, pattern, yarn, gauge, and photos or sketches of the project.
There are also spaces where you can note down any customizations and alterations that you make for the project. This is one of the more basic journals out there, but if clean and simple is what you need to help you organize your knitting projects, this is definitely a worthy option.
DIY Knitting and Crochet Journal
I adore this tutorial for setting up your own knitting and crocheting journal from Sew Homey. Check it out below.
Up Next: How To Knit Faster – Speed Knitting Tips
