handmade by stefanie

When you think of Uruguay, inevitably you think of yarn....at least, if you are a knitter! Every yarn I've touched from Manos del Uruguay has not disappointed. I've been fortunate to work with several over the years, but somehow a skein of Serena , their blend of 60% baby alpaca and 40% pima cotton, never found its way into my hands. Until now! The kind folks at Fairmount Fibers, the US Distributor for Manos yarns, recently sent me a skein of Serena in a new colorway called Ethereal. As soon as I felt how soft and squishy this skein was, I knew it wanted to be a lacy cowl of some sort. What I found interesting about this yarn is that it's labeled as a sport weight, but the site notes that it has a "versatile" gauge. I ended up using smaller needles than recommended to knit this project, but I have a little bit left over and may have to try knitting a swatch on US 6 or 7 out of sheer curiosity! This yarn was amazing to work with, and in fact, I forgot that ...

For the first time in the seven years since I started working at Stitchcraft Marketing, I didn't go to the TNNA Trade show this past weekend, which is the annual buying show for yarn shops (and hence, where a lot of my clients exhibit). It's kind of nice to have the year off, because while trade shows are fun, they are also quite tiring. I spent a very relaxing weekend at home crafting and watching the Royals get swept by the reigning world champs. So it goes. I'm not one to suffer from FOMO, but I am curious to hear what everyone thought about the new venue in Cleveland. I'm especially interested to hear who was - and wasn't - there in the wake of last weeks' surprising announcement that Classic Elite Yarns is closing . It seems like this news has made the rounds of social media, but they aren't the only yarn-related business to recently announce that they are closing their doors: Lantern Moon posted about a "closeout sale" earlier this month ...

Sometimes, when you plan a project, it goes horribly wrong. For example, I was really excited to weave with some yarn I've been given at the Creativation trade show at the start of this year; my plan was to make a soft and squishy bath mat using some recycled organic cotton yarn as the warp and t-shirt yarn as the weft. However, my plans quickly fell apart when I started warping my loom and discovered that I had completely miscalculated the amount of yardage I would need for this project. I ran out of yarn pretty quickly, and discovered that it was nearly impossible to purchase this yarn online, either from a yarn store OR via someone's destash on Ravelry. It would have been such an awesome project... The problem with running out of yarn mid-warp is that you can't really take it off the loom and re-use it for something else. Once it's on, it's on, because it's such a pain to get off that you're better off just cutting your losses, quite literally. Th...

I'm so excited to finally share this pattern with you! I've been working on it for a while because I am a Very Slow Knitter these days, plus my design process seems to involve a lot more frogging and reknitting these days. At any rate, it is with great pleasure that I introduce the Canyon Steps Cowl ! A series of triangular motifs grow larger in this fun-to-knit cowl using one skein of Gobi, a luxurious blend of baby camel and mulberry silk. The cowl begins with a wide rib edging followed by 3 sections using charted and written instructions and finishes with a wide rib edging and a stretchy bind off. If you can knit and purl, you can make this project! Project Kit Contains: 1 skein - Bijou Spun “Gobi" (35/65 Baby Camel /Mulberry Silk) in the color of your choice.  1 copy of the Canyon Steps Cowl pattern by yours truly 1 3.4 oz bottle of Allure Fine Fiber wash in your choice of fragrance   1 three pack of custom, hand-made stitch markers from Purrfectly Ca...