You may recall that I wrote a post here on the blog awhile back about the benefits of taking crochet on the road during family trips. One of my summer goals was to teach the kids to crochet since it’s a great affordable hobby that can keep them busy during the summer while providing them with a product at the end of the day. That is going really well but I’ve started to learn from experience that there are some pros and cons to taking crochet with you during trips.
Some of the problems that we’ve had to overcome when taking crochet projects on the road include:
- Taking little parts along. Some of the easiest crochet projects for kids don’t just include yarn. Jewelry, for example, sometimes uses beads or other accessories. Toys require craft eyes and sometimes ribbons. What we quickly learned is that it’s a hassle to take these extra parts on a trip with us (with the most common problem being that they get lost). We’ve had to make sure that the projects we take traveling are projects that don’t require anything except a single hook and some yarn.
- Packing up the yarn. Yarn doesn’t take up a lot of space when it’s in the car so it’s fine to take crochet projects on road trips. When it comes to traveling by plane, however, you quickly realize that yarn can get bulky. One solution has been to make sure that we are all working on a single-color yarn project using the same yarn so that we can share yarn. We have a special tote just for yarn now that becomes the carry-on for one of the kids.
- Running out of yarn. Inevitably, we have run out of yarn during a trip. In order to finish a project, we needed to go to a craft store. This takes time away from other trip plans and involves spending more money on the trip than we had budgeted for. That’s not a good situation so we’re having to work on that by preparing better and accepting that when we do run out of yarn we’ll need to wait until we get home to finish the project.
- Crocheting too much on trips! I am very glad that the kids have taken so well to this craft. However, I’m concerned about the fact that it’s taking their attention away from other trip experiences. They aren’t playing as many car games or taking as many photos to prevent boredom since they can crochet instead. While I do want them to be crafty, I don’t want them to miss out on true trip experiences. We’re working on limiting crochet time on the road in favor of other trip-related activities.
All in all, I continue to believe that teaching kids to crochet is a great asset to family travel. I just didn’t anticipate that there’d be so many things to deal with in adjusting to this new travel activity!
Start discussion »
Leave a Reply