handmade by stefanie

Last weekend, I finished my Polar Hat for the Bulky Hat KAL that's happening right now over on Ravelry ! This hat was a fast knit, and you might think that attaching all of that fluffy fringe was a painstaking process - but it was actually quite easy & fun!  This is a crazy warm hat, one which I will be donning on those subzero days which are sure to come.  ...and of course, today is  Black Friday, which really isn't my thing. I am neither participating in the madness, nor am I officially participating (unless you count taking a field trip to the 3 Floyds brewery as participating), but if you are looking for some deals you can enjoy from the comfort of your own home, there does happen to be a something special for listeners of the Prairie Girls Knit & Spin podcast which coincides with today:  Click here to listen to their most recent episode to get a 25% off coupon code good towards my Conversation Socks ebook! It's mentioned right at the begin...

In recent years, I've been getting into the holiday spirit by knitting and crocheting holiday decor and tree ornaments for my house. This year, we'll be staying in Chicago for Christmas and  we have a bigger tree....so I would love to see what other folks are doing, too, in the hopes that it helps me fill up my own tree! Just for fun, I thought I'd try to start a new hashtag on Instagram (but feel free to use it elsewhere) to make it easy to share & discover handmade holiday decor - just tag your photo with #yarnyxmas to play along! Here are a few of my favorite projects which I've made in years past: Snowman, Build Your Own by Stacey Trock of FreshStitches Olive the Monster Christmas Tree Ornament by Rebecca Danger Cupcake from the Christmas Knit Ornament Pattern Set by Amy Gaines Hot Chocolate Run Polar Bear by Sarah Delaney I can't wait to see which patterns everyone else is making this year! News Flash: Shop Craftsy'...

Ela models her Funky Frank hat & cowl design. I was recently introduced to an Italian designer, Ela of Modish Knits, through my participation in this year's Indie Design Gift-along. Ela's Ravelry pattern store has lots of wearable garment and accessory designs with interesting-to-knit details such as a lacy yoke, stripes or textured stitches. Besides participating in this year's GAL , her most recent endeavor is Knitting Adventures , an ebook which will feature 4 sweater designs to be released each month now through February 2015. I caught up with Ela via email and I hope you'll also take a moment to get to know her via the interview below. Enjoy! 1. How did you get into designing?  I am obsessed by fibres. Some years ago, I started to spin and dye artyarns. Corespun, tailspun, etc needs basic, simple  patterns to be awesome, so I started to write very easy patterns in order to highlight the yarns.  With time, I am passionate about writing and I wanted...

After a chilly week here in Chicago, today's FO project seems more than appropriate: a polar bear! I was hoping to be able to photograph him in some actual snow, but it seems like other parts of the country are getting ALL OF THE SNOW while Chicago is merely being teased with flurries. Therefore, I took matters into my own hands and used some natural-colored spinning fiber (Louet's Jacob sliver, to be exact) to manufacture a wintry scene of my own! I used the Hot Chocolate Run Polar Bear pattern from WEBS; all proceeds from the sale of this pattern benefit Safe Passage , and last month they hosted a KAL  which shares some handy tips for knitting and assembling your bear. The pattern calls for bulky weight yarn, but I opted to make a smaller version with Valley Yarns Stockbridge yarn as the MC and some leftover stash yarn for the contrasting colors. Isn't he adorable? In other news: it's last call for 25% off   my eligible patterns  for  this ...

It's that time of year when I can't share all of my WIPs publicly - thank goodness I have two KALs I'm participating in to keep things interesting! Over the weekend, I finished the knitting portion for my Polar Hat, which is part of the Bulky Knit Hats KAL : As you can see, I have no cut out many pieces of fringe (over 100!) which are to be affixed to the brim of the hat, and I've also made a ginormous pom pom which will grace the top of said hat! This might be a project I save for this coming weekend; I kind of like to do tasks such as this all in one sitting, which I know isn't possible during the work week. My other project is for the WEBS' Snow Family KAL, which I am not doing a great job of keeping up with, truth be told! You can click here to read about Week 3 on the WEBS blog ; so far, all I have finished is one small tree and the body of a Snow Person (with half of a hat in progress): Also, the window for snagging patterns for 25% off clo...

For those of you who hexipuff, Zoom Loom, or are otherwise addicted to Sock Yarn Mini Skeins: I'm having a Black Friday early bird sale in my Etsy shop! Click here to snag your grab bags - limited quantity are available! Don't forget to enter the coupon code below when you check out for a 15% discount. Here are just a few awesome patterns which are great for sock yarn miniskeins: Mini Madness Crochet Ripple Cowl by Dana Freed Leftie by Martina Behm Pompom Chevron by Mariana Martins (Free!) The Beekeeper's Quilt by Tiny Owl Knits Gradient Mitts by Krista McCurdy (Free!) Temescal by Arlette Mini Skein Striped Socks by Xenia Baxter (Free!) Mini Skein Cowl by Joy McMillan Mini Mania Scarf by Sarah Core (Free!) Mosaic Happy Fingerless Gloves  by Taiga Hilliard Designs All orders ship FREE to US addresses (no coupon code needed) and include fun extras, too! If you have any special requests with regards to colors in your grab bag, just be sure to ente...

Now that the Gift-along is in full swing, I thought this would be a good time to focus on the subject of finishing those holiday projects with ease: td to me, that means mostly translates to all things blocking-related! .There are a lot of great blocking tutorials out there, and I don't plan to spend too much time on such well-covered territory. Instead, I'll be sharing some of my favorite tools, tips and tricks for finishing my holiday projects with ease in the hopes that others find at least some of this information helpful! The first question I always ask myself is: to block or not to block?  Usually, the answer is yes, and my personal default is wet blocking . It's a simple way to make projects look polished - you can fix wonky stitches and pretty much stretch your piece to whatever dimensions you like (within reason). Pretty much any stitch pattern (and even stockinette) is guaranteed to look infinitely nicer with the magic of blocking. Witness this before and af...

Last weekend, I finished this adorable Flamingo from the FreshStitches Kit Club! Isn't he cute? You'd never know that winter has arrived here in Chicago - I managed to find the one part of our back yarn that hasn't yet died for the season! I also finally found a frame for my Excelsior , which was my TSOLKAL project. Now it's hanging in my craft room, where it coordinates with the curtains almost perfectly. I think it needs a few friends, but that will have to wait til I'm done with my holiday gift-making, of course. Speaking of holiday gift-making....the Indie Design Gift-along is here! Click here for all the details over on Ravelry, but in a nutshell, the GAL (as it's commonly referred to) is a great way to support indie designers while also saving money on your pattern purchase and having opportunities to win some amazing prizes ! Participating designers will be offering selected designs for 25% off with the coupon code GIFTALONG2014 . Look f...

I went a little crazy over the last week and have been indulging my startitis. It didn't seem like I was starting that many projects at the time....until I began to list them out! Over the weekend, I started a worsted-weight version of the Hot Chocolate Run Polar Bear , which is turning out to be quite plump (I may have gotten a little overzealous with the stuffing): I also started a tree for the Snow Family & Evergreens KAL which is happening right now on the WEBS blog : It would seem as though not much progress has occurred with my fingering-weight baby sweater, but that's only because I ended up frogging all of my work so that I could restart, making a smaller size so that I didn't have to worry about ending out of yarn. Oh, and then I promptly ignored this project in favor of starting new ones - as one does. Case in point: just this morning I cast on for a mini sweater for the Pins and Needles Challenge using some destash yarn ( click here for more detail...

This year, the folks at Save the Children are challenging folks to Make the World a Better Place with a Sweater  on December 12, which is also known as National Sweater Day! Non-knitters are encouraged to wear their most festive holiday sweater and donate $5 to Save the Children on Dec. 12, but knitterly folks have a special challenge for this year: to knit a sweater for someone special between November 12 & December 12, which Save the Children has dubbed the Pins and Needles Challenge . Don't worry - it doesn't have to be a full-sized sweater!  Save the Children  and Vogue Knitting have provided two free knitting patterns for miniature sweaters for those of you who are pressed for time: Sweater Garland - click here for a free PDF. Cell Phone Sweater - click here for a free PDF. I myself plan to knit a few mini-sweaters using the free Sweater Garland pattern above - I think they'll make great ornaments to give as gifts this year! I'll be c...

I know this isn't the first time I've mentioned it, but it really seems like everyone I know is expecting a baby in the next 6 months. Seriously, I am starting to lose track - or rather, I would, if I didn't keep a running list in Trello . At any rate, when I was sent skein of Winter Silk yarn from Mountain Colors to try out (yes, it was free!) I thought this was the perfect opportunity to get started on my ever-growing queue of baby gifts. Mountain Colors Mountain Silk yarn in Harmony Cottonwood The colorway is the perfect kind of non-gender-specific colorway I love to use for baby knits; I figure, if they know whether or not they'll be having a boy or a girl ahead of time, they'll be drowning in blue or pink. As for the yarn itself, it's a 50/50 blend of wool and silk with a lovely hand; very soft with just enough drape. Though it isn't superwash (something I try to take into consideration when knitting for new parents), I still think it's a gre...

The panic has started to set in....Christmas is less than two months away, and since we aren't traveling to Kansas City for the holidays, I have to make sure all of my gifts are done with plenty of time to ship them out. GULP! To free up my crafting time, I spent most of the weekend working like mad to finish the top-secret test knitting project I've been working on since September, and I'm just about ready to bind off the final section - most likely, that will happen tonight. That means it's time to shift my gift-making into full gear, and unfortunately, a lot of those projects won't be shareable on this blog til after they are gifted. As a result, this is when I start to trot out the "decoy" projects to keep things interesting - these are projects for recipients who either don't read my blog, or won't realize it's for them if they do (I hope!).  Last night, I started the first such project - last month's FreshStitches Kit Club shipmen...

Not too long ago, I was given some very pretty spinning fiber which didn't have labels: Despite having no idea what I was working with, I spun up the pink and purple braids pictured above to create this lovely skein: After spinning with it, I had an idea of what I thought the fiber content might be, but I have been meaning to perform a few tests to confirm or deny my suspicions. It wasn't until this past weekend that I finally got a chance to perform a Burn Test, which is a very common way to assess the fiber content of a mystery yarn or fiber. I filmed my process and added it to my YouTube channel just in case anyone was interested to see the Burn Test in action; below are the steps I followed and some more detailed information to help you identify your fibers, should you decide to perform a burn test of your own. First: BE VERY CAREFUL! I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that setting things on fire is dangerous, but please be sure to keep safety in ...