handmade by stefanie

At the end of last year, I bought a ton of wooden cross stitch blanks, intending to stitch up some cute holiday ornaments to give as gifts. But then a bunch of stuff happened, and they ended up sitting in my craft room for the next nine months, untouched. It wasn't until another bout of arm and hand pain reared its ugly head recently that I decided to pick them up. Once I did, I was hooked - and once I discovered that Shangri-La lace weight yarn from Bijou Basin Ranch was perfect for stitching, I became totally obsessed! At first I would look up other people's projects to use as a guide, but I quickly started experimenting and playing around with my own ideas. Before I knew it, every single blank I'd purchased from this Etsy shop  had been used. Naturally, I bought another batch of blanks and I'm anxiously awaiting their arrival (they ship from the Ukraine). I'm excited to play around with more fun colors and designs! Don't worry, I'm still knitti...

I haven't been knitting very much due to the return of more hand and arm pain, but I did finally visit a new LYS in Wicker Park called Firefly Fiber Arts ! It's a cute little shop located in Wicker Park, and they specialize in only natural fibers ranging from a variety of wools to vegan fibers and upcycled yarns. I'm glad to know that I can pick up some Brown Sheep yarn locally, as I'm not sure anyone else carries it here in Chicago, and they make such great affordable yarns. The two friendly owners said there will be more yarns from the Brown Sheep line arriving in the shop soon! But of course, I couldn't resist picking up this skein of Woolfolk Luft to try out, along with an "I feel like knit" enamel pin to add to my collection: I'll definitely be stopping by again the next time I need a yarn fix!

This scarf has been off the loom for quite some time, but I procrastinated the finishing touches (weaving in the ends, tying off the fringe, and blocking). I used the leftover yarn from a few of my previous weaving projects (one of which is also still in the finishing pile, oops!) to create another fun multicolored scarf. The warp is a gray commercially spun merino yarn, and the weft is mostly handspun, with a little commercially-spun yarn mixed in here and there. I'm not sure if I will keep this one or not; yellow really isn't my color, but I do like how it turned out! I also warped for another project over the weekend while my parents were visiting. My dad has been thinking about taking up weaving when he retires, so I thought I would show him the process, step-by-step! This is my first attempt at a handwoven cotton towel of some sort, and I think I probably should have gone down a heddle size (oops!) - it seems like a towel should be a bit more tightly wo...

A while ago, I was walking down the street with my husband and we noticed a "Stranger Things" themed pop-up bar - with a HUGE line to get in. Chicagoans really love waiting in line for the most ridiculous things (and sometimes cool things, too - I have no idea which category this one falls into). Not soon after that, I stumbled across this article about the hilarious cease-and-desist letter that Netflix sent to the owners of the bar , who had not received permission for it. Oops! The final days of the 2017 MLB season are here, with the World Series starting tomorrow. I've got high hopes that the Astros can stop the Dodgers' reign of unyielding terror (I mean, they have to lose eventually, right? It's just not natural!). Besides seeing the Astros celebrate their second trip to the World Series ever in the history of their franchise, there are a few other baseball-related stories that have tickled me recently, such as this  fascinating post about a former baseb...

I already shared my individual results, but since the winner of Spinzilla won't be announced until October 23 (?!?) I wanted to share the accomplishments of my awesome team, the spinners of #TeamLouetNA. This year, we had a lot of familiar faces from previous years, plus some new-to-us spinners. Everyone was super excited for the event, and our team thread on Ravelry was filled with lots of chatter - sharing fiber prep tips, updating everyone on their spinning progress during the week of Spinzilla, and cheering one another on. It's such a great group of people, I feel lucky to be their captain. For the first time ever, we had 100% participation from all 25 spinners (in previous years, there has always been one or two who drop off and forget to send in their yardage, despite my persistent harassment!). Just look at all of these beautiful handspun singles and skeins: You might be wondering how this year's total yardage compares to that of years past - but fear not!...

I can finally share this design that I've recently finished for Bijou Basin Ranch: presenting the Eyelet of the Tiger lace cowl, which is knit with 1 skein of Himalayan Summit . I was really excited to knit with this new yarn base, a 50/50 blend of Tibetan Yak and Superfine Merino that came out this fall. Designing for a variegated yarn is always a bit of a challenge, but I was really drawn to this colorway  from ModeKnit Yarns called Old Fashion Villain . Working with this yarn was so enjoyable - and even though it's super soft, it held up to multiple frogging sessions. And check out this stitch definition: You really can't ask for anything else in a yarn, and I'm itching to work with it once more. I bet cables and textured stitches also knit up great! You can buy project kits here , or get an individual copy of the pattern here - or, add it to your Ravelry queue . I can't wait to see this knit up in other colors of Himalayan Summit , be sure to...

The fates seemed to be against me for Spinzilla this year: For the first 3 days, I was at an intensive work conference downtown and had extremely limited time to spin. Once I was back to my normal work schedule, I hit more stumbling blocks due to forearm and hand pain from way too much typing. The magic combination of rest, ice, and a very nice massage on Friday night was enough to get me back into spinning form for the final push. On Saturday, I spun through all of the fibers that I thought would be easiest on my arms and hands - I'm pretty sure the lovely merino/tencel I was spinning played as much of a role in my pain as the typing, so I opted for some of the fluffly fibers I bought at the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool festival last month. On Sunday, I managed to transform all of the singles from the week (which wasn't much) into beautiful yarns: My grand total was a paltry 1964 yards - that's a personal worst, as you can see from this chart: I'm hoping m...

I haven't been knitting much in the past week due to all of the Spinzilla madness (I'll be sharing my results this Friday for anyone interested), but my So Faded sweater has grown quite a bit since I last shared it, probably because it's my travel project currently. Over the weekend, I transitioned to the third color: I am really excited to finish this project so that I can wear it through fall and winter. Plus, DESTASHING! It's win-win. Thanks for stopping by, see you back here on Friday!

As mentioned on my last WIP Wednesday update , I have some atypically pink projects on the needles right now. The socks I'm working on look almost exactly the same as my last update, mostly because I had to set them aside to bust out a new cowl design that will be coming out soon. I did finish knitting the ribbing on this hat, and I am really hoping that the stitch pattern I'll be knitting next has a lot of cable suckage going on, because otherwise this is going to be a really large hat.  Since most of my crafting time is spent spinning for Spinzilla this week, I don't have much else to share this week (you can follow my spinning project over on Instagram if you want).  Thanks for stopping by, I'll be sharing my Spinzilla recap sometime next week! 

Spinzilla starts today and I am flying by the seat of my pants! On Sunday, I just barely managed to finish spinning singles for the project I had on the wheel and then ply a bunch of random leftover singles into a frankenyarn to clear out some bobbin space: Plying the gradient 2-ply yak/silk will be the first order of business once Spinzilla starts (obviously, I will only count the yardage once for the plying, and not the spinning of the original singles, which occurred before the start time); my first official spinning project for the week will probably be this merino/tencel that I predrafted yesterday: And the rest will (hopefully) just work itself out as the week progresses. I'll be severely limited in spinning time til Wednesday night, so I am really pinning my hopes on a productive final push at the end of the week and over next weekend. Good luck to everyone spinning this week!