handmade by stefanie

Not too long ago, I was sent a lovely box of yarns from Antonio and Molly Manzanares of  Shepherd's Lamb , a family-owned and -operated ranch in New Mexico. They raise a flock of Rambouillet and Navajo-Churro sheep to make organic their organic yarns which are processed and spun in the USA, then hand-dyed with low impact or natural dyes on site. I've never worked with Navajo-Churro before, so I gravitated towards these 6 colors and decided to do a gamp-style woven scarf (for any curious non-weavers out there, here is a great definition of a gamp ). The mix of natural/undyed yarns and naturally dyed colors was really fun to work with, and I have enough yarn left over to each one which I can use in future projects. Now that i know how each color interacts with one another, that will make choosing colors a lot easier ( click here to see what colors of Navajo-Churro yarn they currently have available ). I'm guessing that many of my readers have not worked wi...

At the start of 2017, I purchased a rigid heddle loom, determined to learn how to weave. Like any craft, the basics are fairly easy, but there is always much to learn and improve no matter your skill level, especially if you want to move beyond the basics. After a year of mostly-consistent weaving, I would label myself as a novice at best, and as I started looking at all of my weaving projects from 2017, I realized that each one taught me something valuable that I can take into Year Two of weaving. I hope other beginning weavers find this helpful, too - maybe it can shorten the learning curve for you just a bit! Project #2: Destash Scarf I may have gone overboard with planning this project to make up for not planning the other one - I very painstakingly went through my bits and bobs of leftover worsted weight yarn to select the perfect gradients of blue and green with some black and grey for good measure. Unfortunately, I didn't take fiber content into consideration when pla...

I finished another handspun scarf, and I think I'll have to keep this one for myself because I absolutely LOVE how it turned out! I used some commerically-made black yarn for the warp (I lost the label, it's leftover from some  project!), and then the weft is a 3-ply handspun yarn that I spun from 8oz of hand-dyed BFL fiber from Nerd Girl Yarns in the #hashtag colorway. Here's where I love the archive that both Ravelry and blogging provide: I would have never guessed that this yarn dates back to July 2014 ! Also, you can read more about the structure of this yarn here - it's an opposing ply, which is a little different than what I usually spin when making a 3-ply. There's quite a bit of yarn left over, and I'm wondering if I have enough to make another scarf. But for now, I've put on a warp for another new project, which was going to be another funky destash scarf, but then I realized that the yarns from my other recent weaving projects all l...

The ginormous yellow handspun wrap is still on the loom. I've woven about 35 inches, which is not quite halfway, but it's getting there. For the most part, I am loving how it's weaving up, although there is some warp wonkiness here and there: while it started out being very uniform in terms of tension, I now have a few misbehaving strands that need to have weights added to them. It's not the end of the world, but it seems like every time I advance the warp, a new issue pops up! I can deal with the many opportunities to learn something new from this project (even if it's what not to do), so long as I am liking the results - after all, this is only my fourth weaving project! I'm sure it will be many years before I have a weaving project that goes smoothly from start to finish. The weft yarn is spun from 8 oz of superwash merino from Cloudlover Fiber in the Quick's Point colorway she dyed for Knitting Sarah a few years back. I'm so bummed that Cl...

I've finished several long-term projects lately, so I allowed myself to cast on a new project from this book I got for Christmas: I chose the Simple Sideways Mitt s using several of the yarns leftover from my very-recently-completed Fade (it's still in the blocking process, but look for finished Fade photos sometime next week!). I have no idea why I'm trying to cram it on these DPNs....apparently I just like the challenge?! Rather than seaming a cast on and bound off edge, I opted for a crocheted provisional cast on so that I can graft each end together when I'm finished knitting. This is my favorite provisional cast on because you just make a single crochet chain that's a little longer than the amount of stitches you need, and then you pick up and knit into the bumps underneath the crochet chain like. I made a (hopefully helpful) mini-tutorial for anyone who wants to give it a try: My current destash woven scarf is now past the halfway point, s...

Over the last few weeks, my crafting time was focused mainly on a few deadline projects that I couldn't share publicly. Now that they are done, I can get back to my regular WIPs, a few of which seem close to the finish line! The waterlilies socks are getting closer to the finish line - last night I started the toe shaping on the second sock! But the big news is that I'm on the FINAL color of Find Your Fade ; how did that happen?! I picked up the crocheted handspun blanket last weekend and discovered that it was just a few rows away from being done - so now the crocheting is complete, but I do have ALL of these glorious ends to weave in: Most of the yarn is big and fluffy, so I was excited to give these darning needles from Knitter's Pride a try - they've made the process so much easier since I don't have to struggle to thread each yarn end through a narrow needle eye! I also warped my loom for another destash scarf project, though I was i...

It's been a few weeks since I shared what I'm working on, mostly because I've been focusing on a secret sample knitting project that I can't share just yet - which means that most of my WIPs are seeing very little action. In fact, the only project to progress somewhat since this post is my Find Your Fade (although I'm still not even halfway through the second to last color). Obviously, I won't be finishing by the end of this month, which is when the KAL ends, but hopefully I can get it off the needles sometime in April! Meanwhile, my knitting basket is getting a tad crowded. That probably wasn't helped by starting another new project over the weekend - even if it is rather small. This cute fair isle mittens ornament kit was gifted to me over the holidays and I've been meaning to break into it ever since. If not now, when*? *Pro tip: this is how you can justify just about any cast-on. I also have a new project on the loom which will be a d...

On Monday, I shared a review on the weaving class I took on Craftsy ; today for Weaving Wednesday, I want to share more photos of my class project, a stash-busting scarf using leftover scraps of yarn. I got overly ambitious for this project, which is only the second piece of weaving I've created on my Flip loom - but that didn't stop me from trying to be fancy and doing a multicolored warp! While I'm pleased with the overall effect, I would definitely take more care to choose yarns that have similar fiber content. Quite honestly, I'm not sure how I pulled this project off, because I was not experienced enough to deal with the wide variance in tension for each yarn in the warp. It was pure luck that it all worked itself out. I had to order a different heddle for this project, and while I waited for it to arrive, I wound a lot of different yarn scraps onto the stick shuttle in the order that I thought I would use them. It worked for a while, but then I ...

Last weekend, I started my first class project from the Craftsy class I'm taking (full review will be forthcoming!) I'm using leftover bits and bobs of yarn to make a long scarf, and I was so excited about it that I wound the stick shuttles two weekends ago while I was waiting for the heddle I needed to arrive. The idea is that it will be gradient-ish from black to blue to green to grey for the weft. Once the heddle arrived and it came time to warp, I had an idea: why not make a gradient-ish warp, too? The thought entered my head and stayed there when it came time to warp the loom. Apparently, I was feeling very experimental and devil-may-care last weekend, because I went all-in and decided to use....five colors?!Not only that, but they were all different kinds of yarn, and as you can imagine, that produced some interesting tension issues to start things off. But this wacky little experiment isn't all for naught: so far, my favorite of all of the warp yarns is...

I haven't had much time to weave since getting my Flip warped a couple of weekends ago, but whenever I have a few moments to kill, I sit down to weave a few lines. It's really fun, and I am liking the resulting fabric so far! I look forward to having a lot more free time in February so that I can focus on finishing this project.  Find Your Fade (FYF for short?) continues to dominate my knitting time - I can't seem to put it down, and I'm close to finishing the third color: I picked my Matchmaker back up after letting it hibernate while I was distracted by the shiny squirrel that is FYF. Then I realized that I am getting pretty close to the finish line, so I should be more diligent about working on it so that I can wear it a few times before spring hits.  I'm heading to TNNA in San Jose this weekend, so I hope to log a lot of knitting time on my flight. Maybe I'll even have an FO to show off next week! 

For the past year or so, I'd been thinking about taking the plunge into weaving, and such thoughts have become quite serious in the past 6 months especially. When Syne Michell's book Inventive Weaving on a Little Loom came out, I'd heard such good things about it that I decided to put it on my Amazon Wish List with the hope that it would magically show up on my doorstep. It did, and it has turned the small little spark of "Maybe I should learn how to weave" into a roaring "Let's buy a loom and do this thing!" It should be no surprise that not long after the holiday, I bought myself a loom! It didn't take long for my 20" Schacht Flip Rigid Heddle loom to arrive from Webs , and I've been slowly getting acquainted with it. There's a lot to learn! I've done a lot of research to determine which loom I should get, and figured I should share my reasoning here for anyone who is interested in giving weaving a try but isn't sure...