My Knitting Notes by Laine Review

My Knitting Notes is a hardcover notebook designed specifically for knitters, it features a woven cover, ribbon bookmark, space for 31 knitting projects, 6 pages for yarn purchases, 18 grid pages, a needle size conversion chart, a list of common abbreviations and a couple of pages with measurements down the sides in centimetres and inches. It's a really lovely quality book and I'm going to run through each section and give my thoughts on it.

The needle sizes conversion chart, list of common abbreviations and pages featuring measurements are all very handy. I think particularly when out and about, if a pattern mentions a US needle size I always need to google it to convert it to millimetres and don't always have a phone signal, which is a problem this book resolves. I'm not sure if I'll write anything on the pages with the measurements on the edges (I haven't done so far), if you have one of these notebooks please let me know what you've used these pages for!

The project pages provide plenty of room for notes on each project, with an initial page for project details, a second page with some lines which match up with the project details and two blank pages. The first page is very useful to keep track of key information, such as what size you chose to knit and the needles you used. The only thing I would change about this page is that I would reduce the gap between the labels and the dotted lines slightly so that each detail can have a slightly longer line, as I found that sometimes I was running out of space. The second page with the lines in a similar format to the first page confused me a bit at first; the large gap to the left of the lines makes it clear these aren't just a continuation of those lines, but I wasn't sure what exactly the intended purpose of them was. I think this page is just a separate area for notes and that the white space is probably for if you'd like to label the lines yourself. I would probably prefer if the lines filled this page to make the most of the space, especially as the large white gap above these lines feels a bit unnecessary. The two blank pages are very handy, I use them to make notes on any changes I made to the pattern, plus anything I need to remember to mention in a future blog post. I'll probably also be taping in some yarn labels on these pages.

I've found the yarn purchases table to be very handy and I've already used it to track a few purchases. It's a great way to keep track of what's in your stash and I think it'll be particularly useful for keeping track of dye lots when needed. I've also definitely misplaced yarn labels before and this table acts as a neat backup of that information.

The final portion of the book is the grid pages. I haven't used these yet but I can see how they would be useful for charts or colour-work sketches. I think I'll be using these pages for my design ideas.

If I could make some modifications to this book, I think the only thing I would add would be a few pages of lined paper at the back for notes which aren't project specific. I've added some sticky notes to the abbreviations page containing my notes about some specific stitches as I wasn't sure where else to add them, but it would be nice to have a more general notes section for these.

Overall I really like this notebook. I think it's a nice way to look back on previous projects, almost like it's a scrapbook or journal. It'll also be useful to read my notes if I decide to knit a pattern again in future. The notebook itself is nice quality and is pleasant to use, mine has a couple of minor defects such as a few little black marks on some pages, but nothing that would bother me.