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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?

Knit a Great Button Down Shirt

Just about anything you can make in fabric you can make in knitting, but there are some styles that you just don’t see that often translated into knitting. 

For example, a button down collared shirt. This is a classic design, of course, and it looks great in a knit version, but it’s just not something you see much of. 

Noma Ndlovu’s Guglethu shirt is the pattern to try if you want to knit your own button down shirt. This one is inspired by cashmere tops (though the sample was made out of yak yarn, not cashmere, and uses two strands of lace weight yarn held together) and includes lots of high-fashion details like double-knit cuffs, collar and shoulder seams. 

It has a patch pocket on the front and 10 buttons including the button band and the cuffs. 

The designer says you can also use a DK weight yarn held singly if you’d rather, and that the shirt looks good in a variety of yarns. There is another version on Ravelry that uses Berroco Remix Light, which is a mix of nylon, cotton, acrylic, silk and cellulose fibers. It has a more relaxed look but it still really pretty. 

The pattern has 12 sizes, with a full bust measurement ranging from 32.35 to 72.25 inches, or 82 to 183.5 cm. The designer suggests 2 to 6 inches, or 5 to 15 cm, of positive ease when you pick your size. I could totally see knitting one that’s even bigger to wear more like a jacket, because I do that a lot with button down shirts I already own.

I love all the details on this shirt, which isn’t necessarily difficult to knit, but might introduce you to some things you’ve never knit before (like those cuffs with the plackets, or a shirt collar like this). 

To learn more about this shirt and grab a copy of the pattern for yourself, head to Ravelry. 

[Photo: Noma Ndlovu]

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