The Ugly Truth About Knitting in Public

Yesterday, as I read all of the World-Wide Knit in Public Day emails in my box, I thought about the times I found myself out knitting in public only to discover it was Knit in Public Day and how fun it was to join in on the hashtag. I also considered dragging my super bulky sweater project out into the light of day and joining in on the festivities yesterday, then I thought… nah. More on that mess later.

A day devoted to getting out and knitting is the perfect excuse to ditch the weekly grocery trip and meet up with knitting friends instead. In fact, The holiday began in 2005 by Danielle Landes, with a loftier goal of promoting a peaceful, creative community around a shared interest. Basically: Knit not War. It is an ice breaker, a friend-maker, and a much better way to spend tedious moments in a waiting room than rotting your brain with the news or a talk show. So why wouldn’t I partake?

Worthy as the above points are, there are hidden landmines to knitting in public that we don’t often discuss and regularly ignore as we head out the front door with a large Ikea bag full of projects to knit during a coffee break with a friend or to keep “on our lap” through a two-hour flight, to the dismay of those sitting beside us.

My question is this: is the dark side of knitting in public worth the trouble? Hint: yes, but it takes planning. Let’s put together a battle plan for “away knitting” and troubleshoot this practice for the best possible experience when enjoying your craft away from home base.

The Key To Enjoying Your Knitting in the Wild

To get the most bliss out of those stitches, you need to align your project with your destination. It needs to be easy to pull out quickly and just as easy to stash into the bag when it’s time to pay the check. You’ll also want it to be the right size for easy travel and doable in a distracting environment or when the conversation takes a heavy turn. Above all, it needs to be comfortable to keep in your lap no matter where you are.

Knitting on the Front Lines isn’t Always Easy

If you’ve ever knit an intarsia bear face in a moving vehicle or worked with a fluffy wool sweater on your lap at the beach, you know that knitting outside of the confines of the hole you’ve worn into one side of your couch isn’t always easy, and sometimes (honestly) it’s not that all that fun.

However, you are a hand knitter, so clearly convenience isn’t your first priority and, if you’ve finished a knit item, you know that even the hard parts of the process are completely worth it for the result. I polled my family, who are often with me in the trenches as I knit in the world, and asked what they thought about this practice. (Skip to the end for their answers.) Now let’s see how to do this knitting in public thing right.

A Few Rules About Public Displays of Knitting

Not that there are any rules to knitting! These are more like suggestions than rules to consider when taking a knit out. After all, you do want to have fun and make progress on all of those languishing WIPs, right?

1. Take Location Into Consideration

A crowded bus may not be the best place to bring a stranded project with five different cakes of yarn attached. Correction: it just isn’t the place. Ask yourself a few probing questions:

• Do I want my beautiful hand-knit blanket project dragging on a dirty floor somewhere?
• Is 101 degrees Fahrenheit a bit warm for my super bulky wool sweater project?
• Will I be jabbing my friends in the face as I aggressively (an angrily) rip this monster knit back in a cafe booth?
• Am I making people hate me?

2. Always Have a Good Sized Travel Project Ready To Go

Keep it simple. Simple is a relative word when it comes to knitting. My easy garter stitch scarf might feel monumental to a new knitter. So, just make it something you feel confident you can knit with ease without having to refer to your pattern too much.

Lots of us keep a skein of yarn, sock needles, and memorized patterns that we go back to again and again handy for these times. Or maybe have a hat pattern tucked into your bag with a second ball of yarn ready, as you near the crown shaping, so you won’t be bored when you bind off in the middle of a movie.

I like to make use of travel knitting for repeated gift projects. When knitting my first Sophie Scarf by Petiteknits, I made space in my travel bag for another skein to immediately cast on a second gift scarf while the pattern was still fresh in my mind and the correct needles were ready to go.

Many of us find that it is less about the stitch type in our project as it is about the amount of space and gear it requires, which leads me to your project bag.

3. Invest In an On-the-Go Knitting Bag

By invest I mean just make it a dedicated travel bag. It doesn’t have to be costly. If your travel project is usually socks, you may want a slim zippered project bag that can fit into whatever purse or laptop bag you may be carrying at the moment. Do not, I repeat do not, use a Rubbermaid anything for this.

I have a lightweight convertible backpack/ bag that can be stuffed into another bag or grabbed as a stand-alone backpack for a quick hike to a quiet knitting spot. Just keep whatever bag you choose stocked at all times with a project (or two.)

4. Keep Travel Knit Bag in a Dedicated Spot

If you can’t find your travel knit bag, you won’t be using it. Hang it by the front door or lay it on the backseat of your car — someplace you know it will always be handy to grab at the last minute when you leave home.

5. Keep an Abbreviated List of Tools in Your Knitting Bag

These travel-size tools may not be the best choice for everyday use or complicated projects but, when in a dedicated travel knitting bag, they are life-savers:

• Yarn cozies if you are using more than one skein at a time to reduce tangling.
• A print-out of your pattern rather than a heavy book.
• A pen or highlighter for marking numbers for your size or noting modifications.
• A pattern minder to keep your pattern neat and orderly, while helping you stay on the correct line, even if you’re highly distracted.
• Washi tape is an alternative way to make the line you are currently knitting in your pattern.
• Tiny, blunt travel scissors that won’t puncture your bag or worse!
• A small ball of fingering weight scrap yarn for holding stitches in an emergency.
• Extra needle tips and cords you may need in a small roll-up bag for convenience.
• A small, retractable tape measure.
• A tiny tin (think an Altoid container) with various sizes of stitch markers (some of which are locking), progress keepers, a tiny stitch counter, a yarn needle, and an interchangeable needle cord key.
• A fixing tool or small cable needle and crochet hook for catching or holding stitches on a keychain that can stay attached to your bag.
• If your project is on very small or breakable needles, keep a needle tube on them in the bag to keep from getting hurt or breaking them in transit.
• Optional, but weirdly useful: a set of nail clippers is always useful for filing down rough cuticles or trimming hangnails that constantly get caught on your yarn. It can also double as a yarn snipper too.

6. Ultimately, Do What Makes You Feel Good

These are just some suggestions. Do you think I always adhere to these? Oh, heck no. Remember the bear face? I knit a near-black fingering weight cable sweater in a dark theater and pieced a sweater together in a doctor’s waiting room. Sometimes, I choose to be extra. If you don’t mind the hassle of all the knitting accouterments (or sighs), go for it!

Let’s Troubleshoot Knitting in Public Scenarios

Now that we have a strategic plan for knitting on the go, lets fine tune with some common knitting scenarios:

The Friendly Talker– There’s always, always someone with lots of questions. I can’t count how many times I tried to steal a moment of bliss for myself in a waiting room while bringing relatives to the doctor and was interrupted by a well-meaning person who wanted to talk about … everything. Solution: Have a mindless knit in your “go bag” for all of those mindless conversations. Remember Danielle’s peaceful community inspiration. But, if you’re not feeling it — there are always headphones…

A Lot of Balls– Yes, I have dropped a ball of yarn in the theatre that began rolling, and unwinding, down toward the front of the theater. Solution: yarn cozies and/or a bag with cozies built in for managing the string madness. This is one I like.

Pattern Failure – It used to be crinkled print-outs of patterns floating away in a strong breeze, but now my biggest problem is losing juice in my phone or just feeling exhausted at the idea of having to click my way through a site or two to get back to the pattern. (I know, modern problems… sigh.) Solution: Take a screenshot of your relevant pattern pages so it is easy to retrieve in your photos for when your internet is spotty or your link times out.

Testing Patience– This one is tricky because we love our family and friends but if they love us, they gotta deal with a bit of crafting stuff as part of the package. My kids held drying polaroids for me as we hiked Sequoia and my husband willingly rips out knitting while I wind. They’re good sports. However, there’s no reason to put your loved ones through the mythological torture of your learning multi-strand Fairisle spread across a tiny bistro table or you counting loudly when someone dares to speak to you during a tedious knit. Solution: Save the super technical stuff for alone time.

So Why Didn’t I Knit in Public Yesterday?

It was all about my current WIPs. I had a long, super bulky cardigan (see rule 2) that was off-gauge and my only tape measure to check the gauge is broken and won’t retract (rule 5) so it gets all tangled in the yarn balls inside the giant basket where I keep it (rule 3) and it was too hot for a super bulky project (rule 1) that would also require a lot of space to rip back (also rule 1).

I could’ve grabbed a sock project but I couldn’t remember where I put it after a recent trip (rule 4) and so I decided to just relax and enjoy my hobby however I wanted to. And that was the rule (ahem, rule 6) that I had no problem keeping.

(Don’t worry my Fernwood Cardigan has been safely ripped back and is being re-knit to gauge perfection!)

Sidenote about Knit in Public Day

( I can’t find anything recent about Danielle, but she has 11 patterns on Ravelry, 8 of which are free downloads or knit recipes and would actually make good on-the-go projects. There’s a distinctly DIY- early-indie-knitting feel to these drive docs that I hope you’ll enjoy as much as I did! The Summer Purse seems especially appropriate for WWKiP Day. )

Want to start your own national holiday? It isn’t that hard to register it on National Day Calendar, but getting people to observe it with you… well just ask the founder of Towel Day.

P.S. The Results of My Unofficial Family Poll

I asked my family, “Was there ever a time you remember being embarrassed by me dragging out the knitting in public?” The answer was no.

“Did it ever get on your nerves that I just had to have it with me at a movie or in the car?” Nope.

Okay, so I then asked, “What did you think in all those years when I had to have the knitting bag with me or got yarn caught in the car door and had to stop the car to rescue it, or I couldn’t sit through another Marvel movie without knitting?” The answer: We just think you’re funny.

So there you go. Knitting in public can not only be a peaceful affair, but it can also be comic relief for the masses. You’re welcome. Now go fearlessly knit something in public.