Crafting on the Road

As you can probably tell, this is going to be a weird week! I’m actually traveling away from home this week and had high hopes for blogging as usual, but that isn’t perfectly working out.

At times like this, I have to remind myself to keep life in perspective. I love blogging and sharing, but when I’m not actually at home with my machine and fabric, I should honor my reality share about whatever I’m really working on while traveling.

Of course, it’s impossible to travel and quilt at the same time. If you know of a quilter that carries her sewing machine along into her motel rooms and is able to produce anything other than a balled up mess, that person is most definitely worthy of the Most Dedicated Quilter Award!

I’ve tried this many, many times and it’s always resulted in utter failure. Probably the most frustrating trip was to Oak Island, NC, where I had brought an entire suitcase of projects along with me, sewing machine, feet, and what did I forget? The power cord to the sewing machine!

So on the road this week I’ve come armed with knitting needles and a crochet hook. How much trouble can I get into with such simple tools? At least these don’t need to be plugged in!

I did have a small spindle in my carry-on bag, but ditched it in the truck in a last minute fear that my green hand-dyed wool would be mistaken for a nefarious substance and my spindle considered a weapon. My brain wasn’t working too well anyway and I couldn’t deal with those illogical fears on top of all the normal ones about planes crashing, so I stuck both under the front seat and booked it to my shuttle bus.

No, I’m not the best traveler. Or really the calmest. It’s why I don’t travel much. It just doesn’t agree with me.

Back to the project, I just so happened to have stopped by a truly wonderful little yarn shop in Charlotte, NC called The Fibre Studio a few weeks before my trip. This was one of those terrific little shops where you browse through once and see wonderful things, then go back around and see even MORE wonderful things, and then a third time and you eventually realize the store has layers and layers of awesomeness all stacked together and even if you spent a week there, you wouldn’t be able to take it all in.

While there, I found these excellent kits of art and novelty yarns created by Stephanie Quattrini (Hanzon Creativity). While the kits are for everything from bags to collars, I can definitely see using a few of these as embellishment on the surface of Express Your Love!

So that’s what I’m up to today. In my down time I plan to knit and crochet a free form collar of various black and white yarns. Free form isn’t really my strong suite because I love symmetry so much, so this will also be a step out of my comfort zone.

That’s it for today! Tomorrow I do have a video ready for Express Your Love so make sure to stop by the check it out!

Let’s go quilt (or travel, or knit),

Leah