handmade by stefanie

On Sunday night (while watching the Royals home opener, for anyone keeping track), I finished the Calm Cowl , which meant that I had only one (active) project left on the needles: Tyler's #BeRoyal socks , which I started last week. Since my last post, I've gotten through the cuff and colorwork crown at the top (for the Game 5 win of the World Series) and have started working backwards through the postseason with a stripe to signify a win or loss for home or away. Four colors on two-at-a-time socks....what was I thinking?! Despite having to spend a lot of time untangling things periodically, they still seem to be moving along at a nice clip: On Monday night, I felt like starting a new project, and thought a simple hat would be a nice foil to all of the yarn juggling for the socks. I wound off this beautiful skein of MCN DK from Ancient Arts (the colorway is called French Bordeaux) and found a free pattern on Ravelry, Violet Waffles ....which I keep reading as Violent  Waffles...

Last weekend, I finished the Boson Cowl using a gorgeous skein of Merino/Silk fingering yarn in A Midnight Clear from Ancient Arts. The pattern appeared in the 2014 Accessories special issue, which I thought  I had in my library, but when it came time to cast on, I couldn't find the magazine anywhere in my house. Oops! Thank goodness you can buy individual patterns online from Interweave, because I was dead set on this pattern and yarn combination. Both of the stitch patterns were pretty easy to memorize, and the rib pattern for the main part of the cowl was absolutely perfect for travel knitting. The designer is Courtney Spainhower of Pink Brutus Knits ; I've been a fan of her work for a while, but this is the first pattern of hers I've actually knit! It was also my first time using this yarn, and it was absolutely lovely to work with - soft but not splitty, and the resulting fabric has plenty of squish. I also love how the subtle variations in the hand-dyed skein ...

On Monday, we traveled back to the US from Cologne, Germany - a long trip which involved a cab ride to the airport, an hourlong flight to Berlin, a somewhat confusing transfer to a huge Airbus which we were taken to via bus from the boarding gate, and the 9 hour transatlantic flight back home. Going through customs, changing our Euros back to dollars, and getting our luggage was a cake walk in comparison. And then there was the 20 minute ride home via the CTA Blue line, complete with a passenger having a very loud and angry phone conversation in our train car - ah, it's good to be home! Doorstep to doorstep, I think we were in transit some 18 hours. Pretty exhausting but totally worth it because Germany was awesome. I can't wait to share more posts with you about it, but for now, I just want to get back to "normal" and share my current WIPS. First off are the projects I started before the trip - the Boson Cowl in Ancient Arts Merino/Silk Fingering: And a simple ...

My two-at-a-time Tortie Cat socks are officially done, just in time for my trip to Germany. I'm probably going to wear these on my trip! For the leg, I used the stitch pattern from Hunter Hammersen's Knowledge of What Was Sensible socks from Fine Things for Plain Occasions . Then, I put in placeholder yarn for an afterthought heel and switched to stockinette stitch for the foot.  I think I'm finally on board with 2-at-a-time socks on circular needles with magic loop. As much as I've enjoyed knitting socks with DPNs, it sure is nice to have two perfectly matched socks finished at the same time. What's kind of funny about this pair is that one sock is a little darker than the other, something that can happen with hand-dyed yarn (that's why it's usually recommended to alternate skeins every other row, so that you can minimize these differences). I split this skein in half by weight and there was no way I wanted to split it into fourths and juggle 4 s...

There for a while, it seemed like I always had a yak yarn project on the needles - perhaps it felt that way because I was working on a really long term project, the Pennant Cardi using 100% yak sport weight yarn from Bijou Basin Ranch! At any rate, I was apparently going into yak yarn withdrawal, so over the weekend I excitedly cast on for the Odyssey Cowl using the kit I blogged about on Monday , which included this delightfully variegated skein of Tibetan Dream sock yarn dyed by Miss Babs...and then I promptly ripped out my work (all 4 rounds of it) when i realized I'd managed to twist the cast-on when I joined to knit in the round. Such a rookie mistake, but we all make it sometimes, no matter how long we've been knitting. Late last night, I redid the cast on stitches; later today, I plan to knit the first round of the stitch pattern flat and then  join to work in the round (that way I am much less likely to make the same mistake twice). I've continued to zoom on...

Today is kindasortnotreally Festivus *, and to celebrate, I can finally share a project I've been working on for Tyler in secret, which is currently at HO status: Last night, we did our gift exchange and he was the proud recipient of one Christmas Barf-colored sock . WOO HOO! Now I am furiously knitting its mate in hopes that he can wear these socks on Christmas day. The pattern is one of my favorites for gift knitting, Lateral by Cookie A. I'm planning to start several new projects over the break, but for now the only other one I am working on the  Xanadu Snowflake Cowl , though I am not very far along and as you can see above, it really just looks like a mess of tiny, tiny stitches and yarn ends. Here's hoping a 14 hour train ride round trip will yield a more interesting WIP photo between now and next week! *if you are a nerd like me, you've watched the Seinfeld extras and know that the real holiday has no set date, which makes it all the more ominous!