handmade by stefanie

Happy FO Friday! I finished my finito mittens for Malabrigo March and have been wearing them all week! They are so soft and warm, and it was surprisingly easy to convert the Waiting for Spring fingerless mitt pattern to mittens (and I still only used one skein of Finito !). I also made some yoga socks over the weekend - these have been in my queue for quite some time, and I can't believe I waited so long to make them. The pattern is from one of my favorite books,  Knitted Socks East and West  by the late Judy Sumner. I used the  Obi  pattern with just a few minor modifications to whip these up! They were a great way to destash some mystery yarn, too; I'm 98% certain this was a skein of alpaca yarn from Blue Sky, but of course the label is long gone. I split the skein by weight and used the whole thing up, save a few yards. I'm excited to test them out; it's been way too long since I've dusted off the yoga mat, in part because our living room is a bit drafty in...

These socks have actually been done for a while - but I never got around to posting about them!  The yarn is some Trekking XXL I got in a yarn swap, and I used the stitch pattern from Judy Sumner's Kyoto legwarmer design from Knitted Socks East & West (if you're wondering how I adapted it for a fingering-weight yarn, I cast on 70 sts on US #1 needles, then used half of the stitches for the heel flap).  I think they turned out pretty well - the stitch pattern kept me interested in knitting them, but it's not too busy for the patterned yarn. I made this hat in a couple of days, but still haven't found the time (!) to sew some cute buttons on the band.  I've determined that I need more hats in my winter arsenal, and when the Spring 2012 issue of Knitscene came out, I knew I'd have to make the adorably stripey East Falls Hat .  I'm not typically one to knit the pattern in the specified yarn, much less the colors used in the model.  However, I've ...