handmade by stefanie

This past Sunday was the final day of this year's Tour de Fleece, and while I can't claim to have spun every single day that the Tour de France rode, I did manage to spin some nice yarns along the way: Two of those yarns are from the fiber I dyed and blogged about last week ; the other yarns are spun from rolags and batts I've made on my Strauch drum carder, plus I have some singles left to weave with (I've recently discovered that thick-and-thin handspun singles are really fun to weave with). I spun nearly all of the fiber I'd earmarked for this year's event along with 2/3 of the new fiber I acquired and dyed midway through. Not bad!  Last weekend, the Chicago Yarn Crawl kicked off, and although I don't plan to visit a ton of yarn shops, last night I did make a stop to one of my favorite newer stores, Firefly Fiber Arts . And, of course, a skein of yarn followed me home! This yarn was part of a special trunk show to showcase the yarns from th...

After all of my adventures with overdyeing finished knits, I was tempted once again to break out the dye pots for this year's Tour de Fleece event. One of my colleagues hosts a team each year, and for the 2019 TDF, Brown Sheep Company provided us with some spinning fiber....and when I say "some" spinning fiber I actually mean quite a bit - here's a photo of what arrived on my doorstep with my cat Tilly for scale. Now THAT'S a lot of spinning fiber! As lovely as all this fiber is (it's a blend of Rambouillet and Columbia wool - heavenly!), I thought it could use a bit of color. To be totally honest, I've been on a real dyeing kick, so any excuse to break out the dyepots is a good one in my book....and this giant ball o' spinning fiber had me feeling particularly inspired to step outside of my regular color scheme of murky shades and greens and blues. But first, I had to separate it out into smaller bundles so that each one would fit in my dyeing c...

I love garter stitch for a lot of reasons; besides being easy-peasy, it's always squishy and lays nice and flat without the edges curling. When you combine that with the effect created by knitting each row in a different color, a simple project is transformed into something that's extra special! This wrap is perfect for the hazy days of summer.... The kind folks from Kraemer Yarns sent me a Garter Stitch Shawl Kit from their  Festival Wear Collection , which features knitted and crocheted  garments and accessories using their Tatamy base, a cotton/acrylic blend that is available two weights (DK and Worsted) and a palette of solid and tweed colors.       I tend to avoid working with cotton yarns because they are less pliable than wool and wool blends, which translates into hand pain while I knit, but I'm pleased to report that the Tatamy was nice and pliable. I was able to knit without any hand pain! The pattern was easy to follow and I learn...

I really haven't been spinning much lately. Although I enjoy it, I have so much handspun yarn sitting in a bin, unused, that I'm not terribly motivated to spin more at this point, considering I'm making yarn faster than I can use it! But the Tour de Fleece is an event I've always enjoyed participating in. Usually I choose a low-stress team without tons of rules and just try to spin a little bit each day, even if that only amounts to ten minutes. The last couple of years, I've spun with Team CKT and they are totally my speed. There are always a few prizes and it's a nice, laid-back group of folks. I spent last weekend digging through my fiber stash and deciding on what I wanted to spin this year: A few weeks ago, I carded a bunch of alpaca fleece into batts; I'd bought it on Etsy several years ago and ended up getting two orders when the post office lost the first one....then delivered it something like six months later (I ended up messaging the sel...