The Road Trip Shawl is a recipe, really. On our recent move from one end of Canada to the other, I needed a knitting project for 9 days and over 4000 kms travelled, through 5 Provinces and 4 US States. I also wanted something that would document the trip. I came up with this shawl recipe that you can adapt to your own road trip, or anything else you can think of.

I chose to dye my own yarn in a gradient, but this would also be a great stash busting project!

I chose one colour for each State/Province we were driving through, with another colour for the borders. If your road trip is not as long as ours was, you can choose a colour for each city, for each highway series or a specific distance travelled.

I decided to have the same amount of each colour, to knit until either 1) we crossed the border into another State/Province or 2) I ran out of yarn, since I didn’t know how big the final shawl was going to be, and some States/Provinces were larger than others. I’ve provided the weights, yardage and gauge of my shawl as a base, but remember your recipe will be different. This would also be great knitting projects for a sport’s season- if you’re in the habit of knitting at sport’s games, why not choose a colour for every game in the season and follow the recipe.

I used Briggs and Little sport, divided up my 5 skeins in half and then dyed them. You can use any weight of yarn you like; my shawl turned out very big based on the length of our road trip, so your final yardage, size and gauge will vary based on your yarn choices and criteria.