Travel scissors

Tomorrow I’ll be heading off on my next research trip. It’s more than a little bit exciting!

I’m nearly all packed, and as you’ll know if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, I travel with only cabin luggage where possible. This time I’ve managed to keep the weight to about 6kg including the bag, clothing, and all extras. It all fits nicely in my little bag that I made last year for our trip to Italy.

When you travel with only cabin luggage, you can’t really take scissors with you for your embroidery. Needles are ok, but scissors are problematic.

A few years ago in a goodies bag at some embroidery thing, I received these tiny little scissors.

They’re about 4.5cm long, so very compact and very light. I’ve quite successfully taken them on flights with me before – both domestic and international.

While they are NOT sharp, either the cutting surface of the blades, or the points, they are enough to cut through embroidery threads. They are never going to be useful for any drawn thread work, as you just couldn’t get those tips between fabric threads to make a cut in the fabric to remove a thread. But if you’re not needing to do that, then they might be just what you need for travelling!

I know that some people use blade cutters – a tiny blade mounted in a decorative thing, often worn as a necklace. They’re useful, but I can’t cut my fingernails with one of them, so these scissors are more useful to me, because with them, I can do both!

If you’re interested in this type of scissors, if you do an internet image search for “mini scissors” you should be able to come up with several links where you can get them.

Armed with these scissors, needles, thread and fabric, I’ll be right for all those boring sitting-in-waiting-rooms parts of travelling! I started a new project yesterday, ready to take it with me.