handmade by stefanie

When I was a tween/teen, I used to love making my own jewelry. I would go to my local bead store, which was called Nomadic Notions, and would buy way too many beads and charms. Mostly I made myself necklaces and earrings, and that crazy thing is that I never learned the right way to open and close a jump ring . It's true. Only recently have I learned this skill thanks to the folks at Solid Oak Inc , who share a handy free PDF covering basic jewelry making techniques here on their site . Not to long ago, the kind folks at Solid Oak sent me a ton of goodies to play with, and I've been experimenting with different ideas over the last month or so. Nowadays, I don't wear a lot of jewelry, and when I do it tends to be something that's small and simple. My first (and favorite) project is this minimalist arrow necklace using a few pieces from their Estrella line: At first, I thought that the CZ arrow charm would be a bit too bling-tastic for my usual jeans-and-a-t-shi...

Being a handspinner has its perks: you can create the exact yarn you want in terms of fiber content, color, and structure, provided you have the proper skill and materials. If you don't spin, you have to rely on the yarns you find in shops and at fiber festivals, which means that you can't always get your hands on a specific fiber, especially if it happens to be rare. The good news is that yarn producers are starting to get hip to the whole breed-specific thing, and now there are all kinds of unusual yarns and blends available to folks who might otherwise not encounter them outside of a fiber festival. Over the years I've enjoyed exploring specific breeds of sheep, from Polwarth to Gotland and all points in between. Last year, I purchased some Shetland batts at the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival from Whispering Pines , a small farm in Wisconsin that raises registered Shetland Sheep. My fiber came with a photo of their sheep and some stats on the specific one who...

There's no worse feeling than looking down at your work and noticing a mistake several rows back, or - worse yet - a dropped stitch! When I was newer to knitting, this usually meant that I had to rip back several hours or ever days of work; sometimes, I would even restart the whole project from scratch. I wish I had known back then just how easy it is to fix this type of mistake without  all of that frogging. The simplest mistake to fix is a dropped stitch in stockinette. While knitting on my So Faded sweater recently, I noticed that I'd managed to drop a stitch and not notice it for several rounds. Here's what it looked like by the time I noticed the problem: Notice that there is a removable stitch marker in the dropped stitch - this is to prevent it from dropping down any further until I could fix it, as I noticed this mistake while knitting on the go. It's always a good idea to have a few removable stitch markers in your purse or project bag for just such ...