handmade by stefanie

My pals Leah and Teresa are working on a book of designs inspired by Twin Peaks, and as a Kickstarter backer, I have been getting early access to each pattern as they are finished. The latest is the Laura + Maddy Mittens , for which they hosted a KAL on Ravelry recently. I knit my mittens with a limited edition yarn from Bijou Basin Ranch called Big Bijou Bliss (aka BBB), which is aworsted weight version of their sport weight yarn, Bijou Bliss. Both are a blend of yak and cormo wool, and I chose a skein of BBB in a hand-dyed colorway from their Indie Dyer series - since snagging this skein at the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival, I believe it has sold out, but there are plenty more options here on their website if you are interested. I made the smallest size option to fit my weirdly tiny hands (they are seriously small for a person of my stature...I exaggerate noe), and also shortened up the cuffs since I am not a fan of extremely long mittens (there are helpful in...

In the past week, I've been spending the most time working on two long-term projects on the needles. The first is my transit project, the striped seraphim project , which saw a lot of action since I had to go downtown for a work thingy (technical term) for a few days last week: When I was home, the newly restarted Curl was my project of choice: Which means that my current sweater project has been a bit ignored...but on the plus side, I am closing in on the garter stitch scarf I inherited from my grandmother: And I started a new project using some beautiful hand-dyed colors of yak/nylon sock yarn from Bijou Basin Ranch: I couldn't resist this pair of colors (dyed by Miss Babs!) which both get their names from Edgar Allen Poe's The Telltale Heart : Lenore and Raven . I'm knitting Martina Behm's Matchmaker shawl pattern, which is a nice garter-stitch project that I am hoping will knit up quickly so that I can snuggle up in it this winte...

A while back, I shared a free tutorial showing how to solar dye yarn with Kool-Aid - click here if you missed it ! The resulting skeins were begging me to knit with them, and even though they were dyed at the same time, there are natural variations between the two which could become all too apparent when used in the same project. Hand-dyed yarns, even those which come from the same dye lot, can really benefit from one simple trick to "blend" the yarns before your eyes: alternating skeins. It may sound fussy and annoying, but there's nothing sadder than the telltale line where you joined a new skein of yarn to your project. To me, it's worth juggling a few balls of yarn, but I know it can be a tough sell for some knitters. So, I decided to let the skeins and the swatches do the talking!  In the name of science, all of these swatches were knit on the same needles ( Knitter's Pride Nova Platina 9" fixed circulars ) using the same number of stitches...

This project has been off the needles for a good couple of weeks, and I have no idea why I procrastinated weaving in the two ends and blocking it. It seems silly, since neither of those tasks took more than a few minutes, but perhaps that's why it's been so easy to tell myself over and over again "I'll do that later!" and then move on with my day. At any rate, my Molten Metal KAL project is finally done! I used 1 skein of Lhasa Wilderness yarn from Bijou Basin Ranch , as did many others who participated in this KAL . If you are a really fast knitter, there is still 10 days left to complete your project and post it in this thread for your chance to win a prize. And discounted project kits are still available here ! I know I'm super-biased, but I think this is one of my favorite things I've ever designed. It's pretty rare when I want to knit something twice, but I was happy to do so, especially since I didn't get to keep the first one I...

I'd been knitting sporadically on my first project from Curls II in hopes of having made significant progress on said project by this point so that I could also share a review of the book itself. However, the last time I shared a WIP, I noticed a mistake several rows back that I knew  would bother me if I left it as-is and kept knitting. So, I frogged the entire thing. Sadly, the above was almost a month of work (well, a lot of that time was probably spent not  knitting on it, but still). And though I really do love the pattern I had originally chosen ( Prevarication ), I have to admit that perhaps it wasn't the right one for my current state of mind at the end of the day when I just want to sit down and do a little brainless knitting. The thing is, it really isn't that difficult of a stitch pattern, but you know how sometimes you just have a mental block against something for no good reason? That seems to be me with this pattern. The good news is, my second choice...

Honestly, I had no idea we would be able to do it again, but it's official: Team Louet has won this year's Spinzilla event! All in all, there were 5,525,309 yards of yarn spun during this year's event, 296,849 of which was contributed by Team Louet spinners. You can see the full Spinzilla results here - and there is more info about how my team did here on the Louet blog . It was a pleasure to spin with such an awesome group of people - I'm looking forward to Spinzilla 2017!

If it seems like these socks have been on the needles for a long time, it's because they have! I started them in April of this year when I decided I wanted to try out some funky bent DPNs I discovered at H+H the previous month. While I initially enjoyed trying out with these novel needles, I ended up switching back to my comfortable (unbent) DPNs because I just wanted to knit a little faster and get this project done! And done they are - they fit Tyler quite nicely and he said he really liked how the yarn felt on his feet (I used a skein of Ancient Arts Yarn Merino/Nylon Sock in A Road Less Traveled). I was also able to capture a glorious eyeroll from my reluctant model during the photo shoot: The pattern is just a little something I made up (a simple knit/purl pattern for the leg and stockinette for the foot), and I used the Fish Lips Kiss heel for the first time ever. Typically, when I try a new heel or toe construction, I end up wishing I used my tried-an...

I was spinning furiously Sunday evening before Spinzilla drew to a close at midnight and managed to spin nearly all of the fibers I had earmarked for the event (only a half-pound of dyed merino remained unspun). I was hoping to double my usual 3,000-ish yardage of the past few years, but managed to only add about 1k to the usual yardage, finishing at 4034. I probably could have gotten that last bit of fiber spun up if I hadn't taken an ill-fated excursion to Windy Knitty in Andersonville on the same day as the Chicago Marathon (a journey that requires two bus lines, or a bus and a train, if you prefer). Though the event was in the morning and I wasn't trying to take mass transit til the afternoon, the effects of many main streets in Chicago being shut down for the runners could be felt, even at 3pm that same afternoon. Honestly, I'd done ok until the final leg, when the bus I was waiting for wasn't slated to show up for 30 minutes (with an immediate follower -...

Spinzilla started this past Monday, so nearly all of my free time has been spent at the wheel this week. My overall goal is to spin two bobbins-worth of singles each day, and then ply them all together on Sunday; by the end of Day 2 yesterday, I had all of these bobbins filled up: The only project I've been knitting on consistently since Spinzilla started is the garter stitch scarf that I inherited from my grandmother: I've had a lot of meetings this week, and during some of them, I have been able to sneak in a few rows to work past the halfway point of the third skein of yarn. It's a nice foil to all of the spinning (not to mention, the long work days) this week! I'm hoping to share my latest FOs this Friday, provided I can get some decent photos taken between now and then. It's kind of a crazy week, but I'll do what I can amongst all the spinning. Thanks for stopping by!