handmade by stefanie

I admit it: I used to think ponchos were stupid, and couldn't envision a single scenario in which I would spend time knitting one, much less wearing it. And I probably would have never changed that opinion if it hadn't been for a request to knit one as a sample for Knit Picks . Believe me when I tell you that the entire time I was working on it, I still had an unfavorable opinion about ponchos. But I said yes because I wanted to make a little extra money to help with the move, and it ended up being the last sample I knit before we left Chicago.  Although this pattern is  officially named  the Aspen Mantle, we all know it's really a poncho!   So when I tried it on to snap a few FO photos before shipping it off to the catalog, something surprising happened: I enjoyed wearing it! It was an epiphany to just toss it on and have it immediately look good - all of the styling issues I have with shawls (which I love to knit) weren't even a thing. Ever so ironically, that...

Ah, the yarn stash. If you've stuck with knitting/yarn craft long enough, you've probably accumulated more yarn than you could ever use in this lifetime. People find out you knit and they gift you random skeins of yarn (or worse yet, random bits of mystery yarn), you buy skeins just because they're pretty, and if you happened to work in the yarn industry for 10+ years (off and on) like I did, there's also a huge amount of freebies and samples in the mix. Long story short, yarn keeps finding a way to sneak into your home and things can get out of hand quickly, even if you've taken great pains to establish some semblance of yarn order.  Before the Big Move last summer, my yarn stash was neatly organized by yarn weight in several large 66-qt. storage bins, and nearly all of it was also photographed and accounted for on my Ravelry account. And then it quickly fell back into chaos as I tried to pare down in preparation for our move to KC.  I donated several boxes of yar...

When I began knitting this scarf last year, I had no idea what story was going to unfold. It started with some skeins of yarn that my then-client sent me for a dyeing tutorial   (UPDATE: since the NKK site is no longer functional, I have republished the dyeing tutorial here ) . Mike had just purchased Nancy's Knit Knacks and Strauch Fiber Equipment, and we had all sorts of exciting things planned for the future, including new products for both brands, revamped online stores & the addition of small-batch yarn to the mix. These skeins were from the first batch of yarn that he'd sourced locally, and after dyeing one of the skeins with some Wool Tinctures from Abundant Earth, I quickly got to work on a simple two-color scarf design which we were planning to offer for free to Mike's newsletter subscribers. Unfortunately, Mike passed away last fall before any of these plans could come to fruition. Throughout the summer, I suspected that there was something serious going on ...