handmade by stefanie

I feel like there's hardly been any progress since last week's WIP Wednesday post, but sometimes that's just the nature of crafting, isn't it? I actually had  made some progress on my 30 Day Sweater - on Friday night I took off for the sleeves and got a few inches of the body knit on Saturday before I decided I needed to rip back and add a few more raglan increases. As you can see, I've caught up to where I'd been pre-frog (and maybe even gotten a little further!), though I feel like I've made very little progress on this project. My only other WIP this week is the slow-but-steady Robots vs. Downtown mittens: Hey, look! That's most of a robot! I must be the world's slowest mitten knitter, because it's taken me three weeks to get to this point. I really need to pick up the pace, because I have a lot of KALs and design work which will need to get done in the weeks to come...and I hate to leave these mittens languishing in hibernation! ...

As I may have mentioned in an earlier post, my husband thoughtfully bought me a WEBS gift certificate for Christmas. After much internal debate, I placed a carefully-chosen order: 3 bundles of handpainted Targhee Top from Abstract Fiber in "The Gorge" colorway (the idea is to have enough finished handspun to make a large project of some sort!) 2 skeins of Terra from the Fibre Company in Blue Spruce (to make this cabled hat from Vintage Modern Knits) 2 skeins Valley Yarns Northampton Sport in Gray (this is for a top-secret  design project I'm currently working on!) After a small delay due to the insane weather this month, it arrived and I am dying to dive in! Alas, I find myself heading to Orlando today for business while Tyler holds down the fort. I'm pretty sure I'll be busting out the spinning wheel just as soon as I return home and get unpacked.  I also purchased a pound of Louet Dorper Top ; I'd spun some during Spinzilla last October a...

Happy Friday, I'm excited to share two projects with you today! The first is another adorable amigurumi snowman using the choose-your-own-adventure pattern from FreshStitches: I thought my first snowman could use a friend, especially since he will be spending the next 10 months in storage. I love this pattern and will probably crochet one or two more next holiday season! My second FO is the Arctic Circle Cowl , which I started right around the time the Polar Vortex hit Chicago. I finished it while I was in Kansas City for a wedding last weekend, and have been enjoying it ever since! I absolutely love yarns from The Fibre Company, and Tundra  is very soft and lovely to work with: it's a heavenly blend of baby alpaca, merino and silk. The tent stitch pattern was quite easy to memorize, and I love the way the cowl drapes when I wear it. Thanks for stopping by this week - for FO Friday inspiration, visit the  Tami's Amis blog . Have a crafty weekend! 

Last night, I actually went out instead of doing my usual Friday night (or any  night) routine of knitting and Netflixing. My favorite LYS, Windy Knitty , was previewing their fall yarns (The Fibre Company, Rowan, Noro, Titus, etc.) and the Knitter's Pride line, including the new Nova Cubics, Bamboo and Karbonz. I took the fancy camera and everyone was a good sport about me taking photos. Since I'm usually working in the vacuum of my home office, it was really awesome to be a fly on the wall and hear everyone talk about what needles and yarns they preferred. Sometimes, the conversation is a lot different than the one that takes place online, since the anonymity of the interwebs often begets a higher incidence of complaining. I'm speaking in generalities, of course - and it's true that most people don't go out of their way to share positive feedback, both online in real life (revenge-seeking Yelp-ers, I'm thinking of you!). For the most part, the fiber communi...

Canopy Fingering in Sumac Monday posts are always a wild card for me, but more and more frequently they are the place where I share my latest yarn obsession, what's new on one of my favorite sites, Craftsy , or some sort of yarn-related review. Hopefully these posts are interesting for you, my dear readers (after all, that's what it's all about)! As one of my favorite yarn stores prepares to close its virtual doors (read more about that here ), I found myself placing yet another order a the beginning of this month. I've fallen in love with the yarns from The Fibre Company and simply couldn't resist snagging a sweater's worth of Canopy Fingering for under $50! Peruvian Manta When it arrived, I absentmindedly piled the yarn onto a pretty piece of weaving (called a manta ) that my colleague Leanne had bought for me in Peru. Later, I realized that they both complemented each other quite well, so I took some stash photos using the manta  as a backdrop....

I'm still chugging away at my thrummed mittens , though over the weekend I started running perilously low on thrums. I probably should have seen that coming, but at least I have plenty of fiber to make more thrums....I just hope that I can get two mittens' worth out of them, since the first mitten is probably going to take over 200 thrums! I started a very simple hat last week which has been my primary on-the-go project. The pattern is a free pattern from Kelbourne Woolens called the Genmaicha Hat . I have to say that the name is really what did it for me, since it's my favorite kind of tea (though I am also in love with Canopy Fingering ). I happened to have some leftover yarn from my Color Affection Shawl - a full skein of Canopy Fingering in Sarsparilla and half-skein in Conifer; I did have a brief moment of insanity where I thought I should purchase one more skein to knit the teeny-tiny stripe before the ribbing, but then I realized I had enough Malabrigo Finito in...

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...

Amazingly, I've been avoiding startitis this month, spending most of of my crafting time working on the Destash Dolman I started earlier this month and the Panoramic Stole I began on Christmas Day. Don't get me wrong - there are TONS of projects I'm dying to start, but for some reason I am content to work on these with the hope of finishing them much earlier than expected (and, of course, giving me free reign to start something new!). The Destash Dolman has become my outside-of-the-house/transit project, since I don't need to reference the pattern while I'm working. I've definitely made some good progress after a few adventures outside of the homestead: last WIP Wednesday, I had three stripes completed - now I'm up to 8! The Panoramic Stole has seen the most progress, especially since I've been working on it diligently for the past four days. I finished up the first skein of yarn on Monday night and have reached the point in knitting where I...

Here's one more project that I've finished recently but not shared on my blog: the Svalbard Mittens by Kate Gagnon Osborn, which use two skeins of Tundra . They are so soft and warm! I finished them right before Christmas and have been wearing them a bunch on this trip. We'll be heading back to Chicago tomorrow, this blog should be back to its regularly scheduled programming later this week. Wishing all of my readers a happy, healthy and crafty 2013!

I'm nearly done with my holiday gift knitting....but just as soon as I get closer to my goal, I decide to add a few more project to my list! What is wrong with me?!? Since I can't really show you those projects, this will be a really  short update today (for more WIPs, stop by the Tami's Amis blog ). After completing my two   biggest holiday WIPs last week, I decided to dedicate some time to work on my neglected  Svalbard Mittens . As you can see, they are coming along slowly but surely! I've made a few mistakes on the cables, but they look like an intentional design feature  since I'm knitting them two-at-a-time and the mistakes are at least mirrored in both mittens. Plus, if someone is close enough to my hands to notice, I can slap them in the face. That's my plan, anyhow. On a more serious note, I'd like to direct you to this post on the Fresh Stitches Blog . If you are stunned and saddened by what happened last week in Newtown, CT, here is a chance...

There aren't many FO's I can share with you these days, so I'd like to share something cool from my crafty friend Lauren, who recently used my Whale Chart for an unexpected endeavor...I would like to present to my dear readers the first-ever "put a whale on it" fuse bead ornament! It probably won't surprise you to learn that I succumbed to a few Black Friday/Cyber Monday yarn sales. Even if you only read this blog occasionally, I'm sure you've figured out by now that I am incredibly weak-willed when it comes to all things yarn and fiber. At any rate, my first order showed up earlier this week - another skein of Tundra in Scotia Sea (I want to make the Arctic Circle cowl to coordinate with my mittens !) and the last skein of Swan's Island Organic worsted in the limited-edition colorway, Sugar Maple. I can't wait to knit with it - the color is even prettier in person and it's very soft! I was also thrilled to finally get my hot little ...

I  know it's not knitting-related, but I'd like to update everyone on my band's Kickstarter project which is coming down to the wire - as I write this, we have 51 hours to reach our funding goal (we're just $243 away). You can get the details on my initial blog post or even on our Kickstarter project page , but the long and short of it is that we wanted to do a series of 7" vinyl singles with really cool hand-drawn art. Each single will feature cover art by a different artist (my husband Tyler, a few of our friends, and me) and, let's face it, vinyl is just awesome. We'll also be offering MP3 versions of the songs for our fans that don't own record players (or just want to listen to them on their iPod). The songs are already recorded, mixed and mastered - we just need to raise the funds to press them to vinyl and release them!  Click here to make your pledge if you need some new music to knit to, especially if you need to find that transcendent...

Today's FO Friday will be a little different, since I technically don't have any FO's to show off! I do, however, have a newly-restored Featherweight Cardigan . I knit this sweater all the way back in 2009 (it doesn't seem like it was that long ago!) and in the last year or so, noticed a few small holes in the sweater sleeves. I set it aside for repairs, and, well.... you know what happened ! Meanwhile, I plan on avoiding the insanity of Black Friday like the plague today. I'm sure I'm not the only on who rather be knitting! I'm more of a Cyber Monday person myself, as I prefer to do nearly all of my shopping (no matter what day it is) from the comfort of my own home while wearing pajamas. Fellow pajama shoppers, you are in luck! From 11/23-11/26, Craftsy is running its Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sale and all classes are being offered at $19.99 or less! I have to say, I'm a serial class-taker at Craftsy . Just this year alone, I have expanded my...

Here's a completely-finished hat that I never once mentioned on this blog! What happened is I wanted something simple to knit on the train (a friend of ours was visiting, so I knew I'd have lots of extra train-knitting time for the duration of their stay!). I noticed that Veera Välimäki's Little Things had been lurking in my queue for quite some time and realized it would be the perfect way to use my remaining Road to China Light from the Tree of Life Cowl I made earlier this summer. If you're looking for a quick knit and don't mind a lot of garter and stockinette (I certainly don't), this is the project for you! I whipped this hat out in five days; the hardest part was finding the perfect buttons to complete the project. Considering the ridiculous button stash I've accumulated in the past few years, it would be reasonable to expect that choosing buttons would be the easiest part of the project-finishing process. NOT SO! I pored over my stash for probabl...

It's done, it's done, it's DONE! And I love it...(is anyone surprised?) This shawl is enormous - as you can see in this photo I took while it was blocking, it's longer than my massage table (which, if you're interested, is a good 75 inches in length). I used three colors of The Fibre Company's Canopy Fingering , which is one of my new favorite yarns - alpaca, merino and bamboo. It's delightful to knit with. I think this will be a staple throughout the fall and winter - it's perfect for draping around my shoulders, and since it's in my three favorite colors, it'll pretty much match everything I own (not that matching is ever a huge priority for me, considering most days I don't actually interact with the world at large!). One of my friends on Facebook commented that it looked like a Japanese rock garden, which hadn't actually occurred to me, but now I can totally see it. It was a pretty zen-like knitting experience, too - very soo...

I've been obsessed with this pattern ever since it came out, and at the beginning of June, I finally cast on with some Road to China Light I bought at Doodlebug Yarn. I chose Carnelian, which I thought was going to be more reddish in color (those laptop screens can really fool me sometimes!); it turned out to be more of a purple-red - I'd call it a mauve almost. I was weighing my options between Carnelian and Garnet and probably should have gone the other way when I placed my order. At any rate, it was a surprise, but I decided to just go with it and start knitting. I tend to buy the same colors of yarn over and over again, so sometimes the caveat emptor of online yarn purchasing is a good way to get me out of such color ruts. RtC is a super-soft blend of baby alpaca, silk, camel and cashmere. Yep, it's incredibly soft! I used my Cubics special interchangeables (they're great for hats and cowls, hence I am now obsessed with them) and quickly realized that this patte...

Lately, socks seem to languish on the needles.  I'm not sure why - I love knitting them!  And yet, the colorwork socks I started last month have been cryogenically frozen since before TNNA...n o real reason, but I just can't seem to progress past the heel turn: I'm having similar issues of inertia with my toe-up socks . While I love the yarn and the pattern, second sock syndrome - something I've never had to deal with in my seven or so years of sock knitting - has set in. Getting the toe started on sock #2 is my main stumbling block; I'm either too tired or stressed or pressed for time to sit down and work through the cast-on and first few rounds of toe shaping.  Here's #1 - it looks great, right?  If only it had a friend! Meanwhile, my Narwhal Mittens are also progressing at a glacier-like pace. I started them at the beginning of June ( before the colorwork socks but after the toe-up socks, for those of you keeping track) and have yet to proceed to mi...