How to decide what knitting to take when travelling?
How do you decide what holiday knitting to take with you when you travel? Do you spend more time choosing what yarn to take than which clothes to pack?
This week we tackle the thorny subject of holiday/travel knitting. A source of much anguish for the average knitter, choosing what to take with you, and what to leave behind, can be like picking a favourite child. Even a short getaway can lead to stash packing that would enable you to survive a zombie apocalypse.
Jo’s top 3 tips for travel knitting projects
1) A one-skein shawl. Any will do, but the best ones involve a repeating two-row pattern for the majority of the project. Hitchiker by Martina Behm, FFFS by Louise Tilbrook and a lot of the Curious Handmade shawls (Spindrift and Talisman spring to mind but Pebble Beach could be good too).
2) Socks. Self striping and pattern-free preferably, especially for car knitting.
3) Simple stocking stitch or garter stitch acres in larger garments, depending upon the mode of travel.
How much holiday knitting is too much?
So, today we discuss some ideas for how to decide what to take and what kind of projects lend themselves particularly well to travel knitting. Towards the end of the episode, we are joined again by Leona Jayne of Fluph, with some outtakes from her episode in 120.
Here, she discusses which projects she will be taking on her trip, which includes a 10 and 12 hour flight just to get there.
Good potential travel knitting projects
Kunye by Clare Devine
Dotted Rays by Stephen West
Music for this episode is by Adam and The Walter Boys with ‘I Need a Drink’, available on iTunes.
I often end up with more projects than I strictly need for a trip but I hate the idea of being knittingless.
Because most of my knitting is for samples (often in sizes tinier than I can squeeze into), I decided on a recent week-long trip that the main project would be a shortsleeved sweater for me. With 4hr flights (plus delays), hanging about airports, early mornings on a balcony, and time in the passenger seat of a hire car etc, I managed all but the neckband (forgot the sewing up needle) and started playing with a shawl idea on the flight home.
I had packed the sock/shawl yarn and a small crochet project to be on the safeside.
For a long trip I tend to go for socks and shawls because a few skeins of sock and lace yarn take up a small space in my case but present a good amount of knitting. And sock knitting in tropical climes is a great way to meet locals.
Some great tips here. It’s amazing sometimes how you get a load knitted and others when you expect to have a lot of knitting time, you hardly manage a row!