handmade by stefanie

Here we go again....startitis has set in once again! I am trying to concentrate on gift-making this month since there are many birthdays in my family this fall with the holiday season not far behind. Of course, when a beautiful new set of needles arrives on your doorstep, are you really going to NOT take them for a test drive? Karbonz Starter Set - there are actually 5 sizes, but I am already knitting with two of them! Sure, I could just find a gift project that uses any one of the five sizes in the set, but it sure is a lot more fun to cast on for a few selfish knitting projects. I started with the Mountain Moss Shawl from the Summer issue of Pom Pom Quarterly using the Wool Dispensary yarn I bought during last week's yarn crawl : Then the fall issue of Knitscene arrived, and I did a little stash diving to start the Emmanuelle sweater by Mercedes Tarasovitch-Clark: As you can see, I started with the sleeves two-at-a-time; I'm using Stitch Nation Bamboo Ew...

The Chicago Yarn Crawl kicked off on Friday night, and since this is the first year I've ever grabbed myself a passport and (sorta) participated, I decided to drop by Knit 1 on Friday night for their kick-off party and The Wool Dispensary trunk show. There are three exclusive colors that Sam created for the event, and I couldn't resist bringing home a skein of one of those colors, Vortex: I have to admit that I'm not planning on getting a lot of stamps on my passport; there are 30 shops participating this year, many of which are in the suburbs and outlying areas. If you don't have a car (like me), it's not impossible to visit these shops, but it is definitely time-consuming once mass transit comes into play. For those of you who are more than ambitious than me, The Fiber Friend posted a handy guide to doing the Chicago Yarn Crawl without a car . Stitches Midwest is happening next weekend, and I've decided not to go this year. The drive to Schaumburg j...