Before we left on our trip last week, I spent a fair amount of time fretting about what projects to take along with me, coming up with pros and cons for all the possibilities. As usual, I wound up over-yarning by quite a bit.

I wound up taking along my Delftig marlisle mittens, the yarn and pattern to make the Braid-O-Rama cowl, and the kit to make the Whirling Dervishes cowl from Jimmy Beans breast cancer fundraiser for this year. If you are thinking “That’s a lot of knitting for 5 days” you would be right.

I basically wound up giving the mittens a trip to see Las Vegas and then back home again. But I did get the other two projects done!

Whirling Dervish was my travel knitting. I worked on it on the flights down and back and in the airports. It was ideal plane kitting, as it used one ball of yarn, and the instructions were one sheet of paper. The cabling is even traveling stitches, so you don’t even need a cable needle! I did have a few last rows to do once we got home, but it was mostly done while on the trip.

The Braid-ORama cowl mostly got finished during down time at the hotel. Since I was taking it pretty easy over the week, I did get some decent knitting time. Like the other project, I had a couple rows to finish after we got home, and then of course blocking. But in any case, this cowl is a nifty exercise in different types of knitted braids.

The pattern for this one is called Braid-O-Rama cowl by Ann Weaver. The yarn is Valley Yarns Berkshire, in colors Gold, Orange, Copper, Turquoise and Red Purple. The one thing I changed from the pattern is she calls for an i-cord bind off alternating blue and yellow. But I felt more like doing a braid-looking edging, so I just did a normal cast-off and alternated knitting orange and turquoise. I like it better than the i-cord, which I started to do but just didn’t look right to me.

These are both good quick projects, especially if you are on the go!

What kind of projects do you prefer to take on travel?