Rest is its Own Reward: Tips for Vacation Crafting
As my summer vacation approached this year, I got excited about the possibilities of getting quite a lot of knitting done. Our plan was to spend about a week on the Michigan side of Lake Michigan, trailer camping at a campsite with no wi-fi; we did have a few plans to hike and explore the area, but we also planned to have a lot of downtime, which would ensure a lot of knitting time. I even took photos of where the three projects I was taking with me started and tagged them with progress keepers, so I could measure how much I got done.
A few days into our trip, while eating lunch in a place with wifi, I was peeking at my personal emails and found a Culture Study post from Anne Helen Peterson – a piece about the need to see rest as just as much an achievement as any measure of “productivity” our exercise apps and work metrics might measure. It really struck a chord with me. Here I was, on vacation, priding myself on not checking work email (I even put an out of office message on my tech editing inbox for the first time) and yet I was about to spend part of that same vacation measuring how productive a knitter I was – and then go back home, post about that productivity on social media and help perpetuate the societal push to always value production over rest.
I didn’t stop knitting. But I tried to stop thinking about my knitting in terms of how much I could get done and instead set up scenarios where I could just enjoy the actual act of knitting. I did a lot of knitting outside our trailer staring at the trees, while listening to a podcast, a favorite album, or just the birds singing. I knit the two nights we had a campfire (when my hands weren’t sticky from s’mores). I knit in our trailer, in bed listening (and watching) a thunderstorm outside, or while chatting with my husband about our plans for the next day.
Seriously, I could knit out here for hours (and did!)
At the end of the trip, I noticed something strange – I actually had knit quite a bit more than I usually do when traveling, without even really trying. I always take knitting with me, but often I end up barely touching it, or knitting on it for the first half of the trip and then stopping because being off my usual routines messes up my knitting mojo, but this year I found myself really enjoying the quiet hours I spent knitting. I think my enjoyment in my vacation knitting this year came down to a few key elements:
I Abandoned My Goals for Plans. After I read the Culture Study essay and started rethinking what I wanted out of my vacation knitting, I realized it didn’t matter to me if I finished the washcloth I’d brought along or got a certain amount of inches done on my two sweater projects, I just wanted to have the time to work on them. Depending on what you have with you your plans may be related to certain parts of your trip – I had one particular project that was the designated car and low-light knitting because it was just stockinette in the round, and another that was the primary afternoon quiet time knitting because it needed just a bit more focus. But keep the focus on what you want to work on instead of what you want to get done.
I Kept it Simple, But Gave Myself Options. As it happened, the projects I took with me this trip were all simple enough that I barely needed to look at the pattern. I am obsessed this summer with the Purl Soho Fair + Square washcloth, so I had my third one on the needles with me, as well as the As If Tee Lite by Shay Johnson (Ravelry link), a sweater that needed a large swath of stockinette in the round knit up, and Andrea Mowry’s Big Cozy Sweater, which starts as a fairly simple four row textured pattern worked in a big square. They all scratched different parts of my knitting brain and needed different levels of focus, so I could switch between them as needed. But I also didn’t have to spend tons of time checking the patterns, measuring lengths, or even working a row counter.
Your mileage may vary here, of course – maybe you really want to tackle something more complicated because you know you have more time to focus on it or you are staying with a friend or family member who shares your craft and you know you can borrow tools from them or want to ask for their help with a certain technique. But in general your vacation knitting will be more restful if you don’t have to keep track of too many tools or instructions.
I Put Intentional Knitting Time in My Vacation Plan. This doesn’t have to be as scheduled as it sounds (although maybe if you are one of those people who likes a fully planned out agenda when vacationing, it needs to be). But one thing I realized is that on previous vacations, I often brought my knitting for when I didn’t have anything else to do – when we were stuck inside because of weather or had an hour to kill before we had tickets to something. On this vacation, I left the house intending to spend a chunk of almost every day knitting outside at the campsite. Even though when I made that plan I was thinking more about how much I could “get done” rather than it being more of a restful activity, I think having the scheduled time made a huge difference in how much I enjoyed the knitting as well as how restful it felt. It wasn’t just an activity I was doing while waiting for more exciting things to happen; I was choosing to sit still and knit for hours at a time.
These guidelines obviously don’t have to just apply to knitting or crocheting, they could easily work for embroidery, pieced patchwork or other hand sewing projects, drawing, writing, or many other hobbies where it can be easy to get caught up in achievement milestones rather than enjoying the process. You don’t even have to go on vacation to implement a crafting vacation plan – I am planning to try this the next time my crafting mojo ebbs a bit, even if it’s just for a weekend or a few evenings.
How do you plan for your vacation crafting? Do you find it hard to break out of that productivity mindset?