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Tips for Packing Your Travel Knitting

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I was recently on vacation, which involved trips up 12 hours in the car there and back.

Being a knitter, of course I saw that as prime knitting time.

I always have a little anxiety around what knitting to pack when I’m going on a trip, and I don’t always make the best choices. This time around I had nothing planned until the night before we left!

It all worked out pretty well, and I decided to write up my tips for building your travel knitting bag over on my blog.

It’s important to consider how long you’ll be gone and how much travel time you have to work with, what kind of projects you like when traveling and what other supplies you will need for your chosen projects.

How many projects do you take with you when you travel? Any good travel knitting tips?

[Photo: Our Daily Craft.]

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Comments

  1. For road trips I can bring my usual 3 or so projects. Sometimes I’ll start new projects on a trip. I usually try to bring a variety that includes something challenging and something a little more mindless that doesn’t require a lot of thought. For trips that involve air travel it depends on how long I’m going, and what else I will be doing. On my last trip I brought a pair of socks that include cables, and a project that involved stockinette in the round where I didn’t even need to carry the pattern with me. I had air and train travel, and a day in the city where I didn’t want to worry about a pattern in addition to my project.

Have you read?

Book Review: Magical Woodland Knits

Magical Woodland Knits by Clare Garland is a few years old as I write this, but it’s such a fun book I couldn’t resist sharing it. Step into a magical forest full of realistic woodland creatures including rabbit, deer and squirrel, birds and mice, to name a few.

In all there are 12 creatures, and though they are rather small (the wolf is the largest at 14.5 inches/37 cm tall and 18.5 inches/47 cm long), they are so detailed these are definitely not projects for new knitters. 

One of the smaller projects, for example, is the robin, at 5/5 inches/14 cm long. It calls for nine different kinds of yarn. Sometimes some are held together, while others are worked with on their own. This pattern only includes three pages of instructions, but the print is rather small and in that time there are six different sets of short rows. None of this makes it too difficult for a knitter with experience reading detailed patterns, working short rows and working with multiple strands of yarn at once, but it’s worth knowing going in that even for small projects you’ll need a lot of supplies and time to work on them.

These are also not meant to be children’s toys, as they can include wires and other supports that could be a danger to little ones.

The process photos often look like taxidermy on a tiny scale, with little animal pelts stretched out and tons of stitch markers showing where and how things go together.

The finished animals are so pretty it’s certainly worth the effort to stitch up these creatures. You might be tempted to make all 12 and set up your own forest scene or use them to decorate your Christmas tree. You can check out all the patterns on Ravelry.

Along the way you’ll also find a little folklore about the animals, charming drawings and pretty photos of the finished animals, too. In the back you’ll find some helpful techniques like picking up stitches, making I-cord and working short rows.

About the book: 128 pages, paperback, 12 patterns. Published 2020 by David & Charles. Suggested retail price $24.99.