Four squirrels and a sock: over-ambitious holiday-knitting plans

Every time I go away on holiday, I put a huge amount of thought into the knitting that I pack. In my head, I'll have plenty of time to knit, but in reality, holidays always end up being busier or more tiring than I anticipate, and I end up doing almost no knitting.

When I pack, I look at all my works in progress (WIPs), and put them into the following categories:

• Vanilla socks (socks that require no pattern beyond their heels and toes)
• Work projects with deadlines that mean I have to take them on holiday (I try and avoid these!)
• Easy projects (projects that can be worked on easily while talking to people: bodies of jumpers, blanket squares, etc.)
• Complicated projects (lace, intarsia and cables, or things that have complex shaping; obviously not projects that are easy to work on while talking to people, or having had a glass or two of wine)

I lie them all out in front of me, then pack one from each category. I often assess the progress on the vanilla sock, then add an extra ball of sock yarn for when the socks are finished.

This summer, we've been away for two weeks, with a week at home between the two. For those holidays, I packed the following projects:

• The Zebra-striped sock snake
• A new, un-started pair of vanilla socks
• My Lush cardigan
• A blanket with intarsia squirrels on for my friend's baby, whose arrival is imminent

To my credit, I did work on all the projects, but the sock snake is still a snake (I probably didn't need to pack the contrast yarn - I did an inch or two of knitting on it at most); I have completed the first of the vanilla socks (hooray! They were the work project that needed working on most-urgently, so double-yay for that); I've made it to the waist-shaping on the Lush cardigan; and I am up to four squirrels on the blanket (of 16; the blanket also needs a border, so that's probably 20% of the blanket. I think each squirrel takes about 1 hour to knit, so I thought I would have completed at least eight squirrels by now...). Not a total failure!

Maybe it's time to rein in my holiday-knitting packing? Possibly just a pair of vanilla socks and another more complicated project for when the mood suits? I have tried packing less knitting before, but always seem to throw in a couple of extra projects at the last minute! How do you pack for holidays? Are you minimalist or optimistic?

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Want to know more about the projects mentioned? You can find the Revelry project pages for each project here:

• The Zebra-striped sock snake
• A new, un-started pair of vanilla socks
• My Lush cardigan
• A blanket with intarsia squirrels on for my friend's baby