handmade by stefanie

Welcome back to another edition of Stuck on Skinny Yarn. The baby version of the Force Awakens hat is off the needles, but I continue to make slow yet steady progress on the Alegria Hat and Snowflake Cowl  - in fact, both will probably be off the needles in a week's time! The Sensible BFL Socks also grew a few inches since last week:  In light of finishing a project over the weekend, I decided it was probably ok to start another hat project, so long as it wasn't with fingering weight yarn. This sportweight handspun was calling my name - you might recognize it as the yarn which I used for the yoke of my Pennant Cardigan , spun from a gradient braid of Merino/Silk roving from Fiber Optic Yarns.  Curiously, I have to cast on for my Liathite Cardigan  yet. When I measured my gauge swatches, I was slightly off, and I am still trying to decide if I want to knit another swatch on a different size of needles, or if I want to do a little math and figure ou...

As I mentioned on Monday, I made my Holla Knits debut earlier this week with my SpringTastic Socks . This ankle-length sock combines easy eyelet lace with cables to create a fun-to-knit sock that is also quite fast - all the better so you can wear them right away! It's shown above in Manos del Uruguay Alegria , which is a hand-dyed superwash merino sock yarn from the Manos Co-ops. I chose this yarn specifically because I have been wanting to try it ever since it came out, and besides all of the pretty color combinations to choose from, the yarn also has an interesting story: it's Fair Trade ! Each yarn is signed by the artisan who dyed it, and it also tells you which co-op made your yarn. The coloway shown above is Periquito, and it's even more vibrant in real life! You can view all of the colorways here on the Fairmount Fibers website (they distribute the yarn in North America and provided yarn support for this design). Every Manos yarn I've tried has be...