Summer is the best season to take advantage of the beautiful weather and escape to the great outdoors. If your vacation plans include setting up tents or building campfires, then you should make the following DIY crafts ahead of time.
Knit Clothes
Depending on your campground location, packing the wrong clothing could leave you shivering in your tent for the whole night. If you are handy with a pair of knitting needles or crochet hooks, make yourself some camping essentials ahead of your big trip. Try to knit a few pairs of thick yarn socksusing Patons sock yarn so that your feet can feel as toasty as your campfire. Go to the website Yarnspirations to find knit and crochetpatterns for socks, booties and more that are free of charge. They also carry a massive selection of Paton fibers, weights and rich colors like evergreen, gingerbread and navy. Using this one-stop-shop is the easiest way to buy yarn for your crafting projects because all you have to do is click a few buttons to make your order and have it shipped directly to your front door within days.
An Emergency Bug Repellent Pack
Depending on the month, you can encounter a number of black flies, deer flies, horse flies, mosquitoes, bees and wasps while camping. Be ready to ward them off as best as you can and deal with irritating bites by making a handy bug repellent pack. The first thing you should bring is a sachet of herbs that keep bugs away when you throw them on the roaring fire — lavender, mint, sage, citronella and lemon balm are all effective options, whether they are fresh or dried. You should also bring calamine lotion, antihistamines, tweezers for ticks and plastic cards to remove bee stingers.
A Firestarter Kit
Whether you need to warm up, cook a meal or roast marshmallows, you’ll want to get a fire crackling as quickly as possible. Putting together a convenient fire-starter kit will make the process a lot faster so that you’ll be roasting dinner in a pinch. Your kit should include easy DIY fire starters like dryer lint stuffed inside of toilet paper rolls, wine corks soaked in rubbing alcohol, cotton balls coated in petroleum jelly or solid cakes made of sawdust and melted wax. Always bring a handful of matches as a backup plan for when your lighter is not working properly — you can protect your matches by trying this clever back-country camping gear idea, where you create a giant matchbox using a Tupperware container with a large strip of sandpaper glued to the top.
Camping can be a miserable experience when you don’t have the right clothing, equipment or backup plans available. If you’re not careful, you can spend your time shaking in the cold, covered in bug bites and staring at some uncooked dinner. With some foresight and crafting skills, you can be ready for just about anything in the outdoors and have a fantastic time.
