How to pack clothing and yarn for a cross-country road trip

This summer, my husband and I packed up our trusty 10-year-old Honda Civic and set out on a nearly 10,000-mile journey from New York to the Pacific Northwest and back. A cross-country road trip had been a long-awaited dream of mine, and so I had a lot of time to plan. As it turns out, deciding what to pack was nearly as complex as choosing the route. So, I thought I’d share how I fit 10 weeks’ worth of clothes in a carry-on suitcase — and how I chose which knitting projects to bring.

Cubes are key

I have been a packing cube convert for a while. Though basic packing cubes are great for maximizing space, I don’t find them ideal for keeping worn and unworn items separate. However, before we left on our trip, I discovered that my favorite luggage brand, Eagle Creek, has clean/dirty cubes with two compartments. This made organization, and laundry, so much easier! I used the larger cube for pants, shorts, skirts and dresses, and the smaller ones for tops and underwear. These fit, along with some warmer layers and my toiletries, in an expanded 22-inch suitcase.

Working together

All the packing advice I’ve read has stressed the idea of bringing items that work together — kind of like a mini capsule wardrobe. Luckily, my clothing tends to be in similar color families, just like I tend to buy a lot of similar colors of yarn! My “color story” was earthy: a lot of orange-y pinks and greens.

Mixing it up

I also decided to play around with layering. This added a different look to pieces that I wore multiple times over 10 weeks. My Jungmaven cropped tank tops were great to layer over my jumpsuit and dresses and make them feel like a new outfit.

A slightly dressed-up tank. (With Crystal of Milly’s Knit Designs in MN)

Tank goes hiking in Oregon.

Packing list

I needed clothes that I could wear hiking and sightseeing in all sorts of weather (northern Montana and the Pacific Northwest are chilly!) and also that I could wear for more professional events since I spent a few days in Chicago for the h+h americas craft industry trade show. Linen pants worked well in both the cool and hot weather.

Here’s what went into my packing cubes and a separate shoe bag:

Bottoms

• Two pairs of prAna hiking shorts
• One pair of Athleta crop joggers
• One pair of Girlfriend Collective leggings
• One pair of Pact linen shorts
• One pair of denim cutoffs
• Two pairs of Linenfox pants

Tops

• Two Jungmaven hemp/cotton T-shirts
• Three Jungmaven hemp/cotton crop tanks (these were the workhorses of my wardrobe and I wore them a lot)
• Three ARQ crop tanks
• One Marine Layer cotton striped tee
• One Not Perfect Linen Bay top
• One Ace & Jig tank (a great Poshmark find)
• One long sleeve Amour Vert striped tee

Dresses/jumpsuits

• Two Pyne & Smith No. 17 dresses
• One Linenfox jumpsuit

Warm layers

• One Patagonia flannel
• One Aliya Wanek sweatshirt
• Denim jacket (stayed in the car)
• REI rain jacket (stayed in my backpack)

Shoes

• Merrell Hiking boots
• Chaco sandals
• Aurora Shoe Co. Mary Janes

Acquisitions

• Not Perfect Linen skirt from Dear Golden in Ann Arbor, MI
• tonlé top and Known Supply pants from Terra Shepherd in Sioux Falls, SD

Picking knitting projects

I’m fortunate that I’m able to knit in the car because I spent a lot of time in the passenger seat (and also behind the wheel, but I don’t knit there!). It has to be the right project, though. Here’s a list of the projects I brought:

• Graham Hat by Jennifer Adams: A simple hat pattern that I had cast on a while back and finished at the beginning of the trip.
• Sable Hat by Marion Em Knits: Another simple hat pattern with a folded brim that was a nice, mindless knit. I finished it just after we left the Olympic Peninsula, where I actually could have worn it!
• Natural Wonders Shawl by Kristen Ashbaugh-Helmreich: I had bound off the shawl a couple of months ago and attached the fringe in the car. It made a seemingly endless process go faster, and I used the little compartment in the door handle to store the fringe!
• Take the Weather by yamagara: I bought the yarn, Lanivendole’s Aestiva, at Yarn Bar in Billings, MT, and cast on almost right away. While the start of it takes a bit of concentration, once I was working on the body it was perfect summer road trip knitting. The designer, Bernice, also named her pattern after a song she heard over and over on the radio while on a road trip in Australia many years ago, so it was a fitting vacation knit.
• ADVENTurer Scarf & Wrap by Ambah O’Brien: I’m on the 13th repeat and I still haven’t memorized the pattern, so I didn’t end up working on this.
• Saven by Meghan Babin: I’m on the second sleeve of this sweater for Mitch, and I just wasn’t feeling cables in worsted-weight yarn in the summer heat.

Of course, there were plenty of local yarn shop visits, so I didn’t stress too much about packing yarn and needles. I ended up with just the right amount.

Further reading

Hope this is helpful for your future adventures! If you need more travel knitting tips, check out this related blog post.