Sketchy

The other day Ysolda posted a picture of her sketchbook. It got me thinking about the current state of disaster that is my desk and my current method for drawing and designing my ideas.

It’s a pretty bad system. I scribble my drawings in pen on whatever notebook, piece of paper, or Post-It note that is handy. That would be the sketch I made for my Veronica cardigan in my notebook that I keep lists in. In between my to-do lists and grocery lists are some knitting sketches. Who knows where the notes that go with the sketches are. I write almost all my notes on Post-It notes. My desk is smothered in Post-It notes with things like charts, stitch counts and gauges scribbled on them. My desk is also covered in yarn scraps, knitting needles and other random crafty stuff but lets pretend it’s not. (There is a reason why these pictures were taken on the window sill.) I also keep my notes on my computer on Notepad but that’s actually an organized system and that step is a little farther along in the process than the sketchy-scribbly step.

I decided to buy myself a nice notebook that could be dedicated to design sketches alone. Happy uhmm… Midterm to me! I picked out one with an elastic strap so that I could keep swatches for current projects in there. Shall we take a look inside?

Here we see the sketch of my next knitting project on not lined paper! I also picked up some art pencils so that I don’t have to sketch in pen anymore. Fancy, right? Accompanying my sketch is one of the many swatches I need to do for this project and a Post-It with my oddly drawn lace chart. Everything is in one place and easy to find and understand! I won’t have to search my desk and try to figure out which Post-It goes to which project! I’m kind of excited about this but we’ll see how long my organization will last.

How do you keep track of your ideas and organize them?