Cat Mad Crochet

I find temperature blankets interesting but terribly boring. The idea of documenting something daily, I understand. Documenting the temperature, though, seems a bit depressing when I know it will only graphically represent the slow burning of our planet. Perhaps that reminder is not something I need right now. Enter our sneak peek book for this week: Observe, Collect, Draw: A Visual Journal by Giogia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec. 

The two collaborated on a project, documented in the book Dear Data, in which they sent each other postcards that documented various aspects of their personal lives from smiling at strangers to smells they encountered during a set week. Each week, they found a new way to illustrate their findings. The postcards are full of repeated doodles and shapes and marks as the two work out unique ways to share their lives through postcards.

Interest was strong enough in their collaborative project that they wrote a second book with suggestions for how to create your own visual journal of your life. This book is rich with ideas for what to document in a blanket, scarf, shawl, or what-have-you that isn’t the temperature. The ideas range from birthdays to shopping to swearing to time alone to gratitude. Not every idea is for everyone, but I think there are enough ideas in the book to create a small herd of blankets. I would just adjust the time period to make a blanket the size I wanted roughly and be off. 

Yes, I know part of the temperature blanket thing is that they end up huge. I always interpreted this as a reminder that a year is a long time both to remember to work daily on a project and to live through. Perhaps I read too much into it. I would definitely adjust any sort of time telling project to reflect the size I want the finished object to be, and I wouldn’t feel bad about it all.

Observe, Collect, Draw is also fun as just a journaling exercise. The authors have a whole chapter at the beginning of the book about how to work with and represent the data you collect in interesting ways as you journal. Each prompt in the book provides any area for you to make your notes and a way to make them. I think keeping such a thing could be both creatively interesting and surprisingly insightful. 

This book is still in print with used copies floating around. I did not find it at the local library. If you are curious about yourself or want interesting new ideas for temperature blanket alternatives, it’s worth a look. As is their first book, Dear Data.