handmade by stefanie

It's done, it's done, it's DONE! On Monday night, my yarn order arrived and I set to work finishing up the final bits of my Rocky Coast Cardigan . By the end of Tuesday night, all of the ends were woven in (and there were many!) and it was time to block in some lavender Eucalan ! All in all, it was totally worth reknitting the sleeves and purchasing one more skein of yarn at the 11th hour. It's the perfect cardigan and I'm so excited that I finished it with plenty of time to enjoy it before warm weather arrives, though I think I will add some sort of closure at the top. I also finished a few more owl hats, which were made in the interim before Malabrigo March began. From R-L: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted in Douglas Fir & Growth; The Fibre Company Organik in Algae and Claystone, and  Malabrigo Worsted  in Pigeon and  Knit Picks   Andean Silk (which is apparently discontinued) in Imperial. Deal alert!   I'm excited to offer you an excl...

I made significant progress on my Rocky Coast Cardigan over the weekend - by Sunday night, I was nearly done with the sleeves (I decided to knit them two-at-a-time on magic loop). Alas, I decided that I needed a little more room for my arms in order to be happy with my cardi, so I ended up frogging an entire weekend's worth of work on Monday night. I'm happy to say that it will be worth the pain, since these sleeves fit me much better the second time around. Plus, I'm still optimistic that I can be finished by the end of next weekend! Since I can't start any of my Malabrigo March projects til Friday, I found myself without a portable project to stash in my messenger bag. As a solution, I decided to crochet a few Owl Hats in the interim with yarn from my stash. I'm using the same pattern as before with the same modifications as well; the yarns used are Malabrigo Worsted in Pigeon and Knit Picks Andean Silk (which is apparently discontinued) in Imperial (fore...

Remember my Calm Cowl ? I have been working on it steadily since I last shared it on this blog , but I feel like it will never be finished! I am nearly done with the third ball of yarn (Wisdom Yarns' Limerick), but I think that I'll keep going and dip into my fourth ball. It's certainly been a great project to take on-the-go; it's accompanied me to various places such as our favorite coffee shop, a bowling alley, and the Genius Bar at the Apple store, not to mention countless trips on the CTA. My Sock Monkey Monkey is nearing completion; even though I feel like I don't work on it very much (it is the "kitchen" project du jour), somehow I am coming down the home stretch at last. I am loving the yarn, which is a hand-dyed worsted with a very nice twist from Haldecraft . Can't wait to finish my monkey! Just as soon as I finished Tyler's gloves last Friday night, I cast on for the Rocky Coast Cardigan  with the Canopy Worsted I scored for 5...

As promised, here are a few more photos of the Panoramic Stole - I'm loving it! It turned out even better than expected, and I still can't believe I knit the entire thing in less than a month. I am always amazed at how quickly I can finish large projects if I don't allow myself to get distracted by startitis...and I think I am starting to like this new approach to starting (or rather, not  starting) projects. On Friday night, I was all set to work when disaster struck - somehow I managed to spill tea all over my Macbook Pro. It immediately turned itself off and I snatched it off of the desk and turned it upside down hoping that some of the liquid would drain out. Then I cleaned up the lake of tea that had formed on the desk, inching closer to our other Macbook which shares the same desk, and began googling what to do about my crisis at hand. Conventional wisdom and various friends who have been through the same experience told me that my initial reaction was correct...

My Panoramic Stole is done, and ahead of schedule, too; I wanted to finish by the end of this month at the latest, though my real goal was to bind off at the close of this coming weekend. I did end up omitting a panel, as I was running out of yarn: I have 14g left over, which is definitely not enough to make it through another mesh panel, let alone the short-row garter section. I was a little worried about cutting things short, so to speak, but everything ended up just fine - my shawl is very close to the 80" length listed in the pattern, in fact. I'm sure that if I wanted to block to the specific dimensions given, I could easily hit those marks! Here's a shot of it blocking in my yarn room. Once it's dry, I'll be sure to take an "action" shot of me lounging around the house in my pretty new shawl! The pattern is from Coastal Knits , which my husband got me for Christmas, and I used two skeins of Malabrigo Sock in Chocolate Amargo. In other exci...

We're back in Chicago and it's time to get back to my usual blogging and work schedule. There are two projects left over from 2012 to share on my first WIP Wednesday of 2013 - so far, I have resisted the urge to cast on for anything else! I've made some major progress on the lacy mesh top I've been knitting with Shangri-La . While I was in Kansas City, I finished the first piece, undid the provisional cast-on at the start, and began the second piece from those stitches. On the train yesterday, I was able to complete the sleeves and decrease down to the body of the sweater. It won't be long til I'm totally done - I hope to be seaming and blocking by next week! My second WIP was started on Christmas day and will definitely be a long-term project: I'm making the Panoramic Stole from Coastal Knits using a skein of Malabrigo Sock in Chocolate Amargo. I traded the yarn from a friend ( check out her blog here ) and was looking for a good project to put it t...