handmade by stefanie

I confess, weaving in the ends on a finished project is one of those tasks I tend to procrastinate. It seems like I have to get in the exact right mood, and to do so, I need to spend about a week psyching myself up for a session of finishing work. What's strange is that I kind of enjoy it....once I finally get started, that is! So why do I always put it off the next time I have a project with a lot of ends to weave in?! I really don't know!  At any rate, I have totally finished and blocked my Faux Fair Isle Mittens , which were a class project from Marly Bird's excellent Mittens & Gloves Galore Craftsy class ( click here for my review and 50% off your class signup!). I absolutely LOVE how these turned out!  I ended up stash-diving to use a skein of Lorna's Laces sock yarn I'd custom dyed as the main color (the top and bottom skein pictured above), then various leftover bits of sock yarn to simulate the long color repeats of the yarn that was...

I'm super psyched about my newest FO! The Robots vs. Downtown pattern has been in my queue since September 2012, so when the designer had a sale last year during the Indie Designer Giftalong, I snapped up the pattern and set aside some yarn from my stash so that I could cast these on in the new year. As I do with pretty much any chart, I ended up enlarging it as much as possible for ease of following along. The pattern was very well-written and included some helpful notes at the beginning, but I did find the chart difficult to follow (even the ginormous 11x17 version I made) due to the gray-on-gray happening with the MC and grid. Luckily, the designer included some guide lines to help with this issue, so I just placed markers with different designs on them to help me follow along. I also relied heavily on my Magma Chart Holder, as you probably noticed in my WIP photos. My only modification was to pick up fewer stitches for the thumb due to my abnormally small hands (and, subs...