handmade by stefanie

I've kind of been in a funny place with knitting lately; either I'm slooowly knitting myself a sweater (or two!), or I'm looking for an instant-gratification project like a hat or cowl. But when I had a chance to try out Drama, a new variegated colorway dyed from Bijou Basin Ranch's Emotions Color series , I wanted to make something a little bigger than a hat or cowl. The Emotions Collection on Lhasa Wilderness (yak/bamboo blend) features hand-dyed colorways from MJ Yarns! A few weekends ago, I went through all of the printed patterns I've accrued over the years and rediscovered a lot of great patterns I'd forgotten about! One of them just happened to be the Gradient Serendipity shawl , which was designed especially for this yarn, but with a catch: back then, the skeins were much smaller. The pattern originally calls for two 180-yard hanks of Lhasa Wilderness to make the smallest size; since then, they have bumped up the yardage in Lhasa Wilderness...

Fresh off the needles is my first project from Hunter Hammersen's newest book, Curls 2, which I reviewed at the start of this week ( click here if you missed it ). My giveaway to win a print copy of the book is still open, so be sure to check out this post to find out how you can enter! I was really pleased with how this shawl turned out, and it was my first time knitting with Sweet Georgia's Bulletproof sock yarn. It's a very soft and luxurious yarn that also stands up well to a lot of frogging - which is good, because I ended up ripping out quite a bit of work along the way due to operator error (counting is hard, ok?!?). The drape is really lovely, and the stitch definition is nice and crisp...but my favorite part is that I only have this much of the skein left over: Being able to knit until you run out of yarn might be the true genius of the Curls patterns, other than the fact that they're generally easier to style than other shawl shapes. Now I j...

This week's FO is pretty spectacular: my Lace Leaf Edge Shawl in Lhasa Wilderness Yarn (say that five times fast)! This shawl was designed by Jen Lucas , who actually lives in the Chicagoland area as well, and it appeared in the Knit Accessories 2014 issue of Love of Knitting . When I saw that it specified one of my favorite yarns from Bijou Basin Ranch, Lhasa Wilderness, I had to put it in my queue! It's knit top-down, and then the lace edging is worked across the live stitches. It took a long time - I think I spent at least a week on the edging along - but you know what? I'd prefer that to binding off a billion stitches any day! Also, the lace pattern was fairly easy to memorize and became pretty addictive the more I worked it! The wingspan is pretty impressive - longer than my built-in bookcase - and the fabric drapes fantastically! I used the Natural Brown color of Lhasa Wilderness (which is also known as Sassenach from the  Outlandish  series), and I cannot ...

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...