handmade by stefanie

Don't miss  Craftsy 's Dog Days of Summer Sale happening now! Enjoy up to 50% off ALL online classes on a variety of crafty topics. You know you'll be glad you took advantage of this sale come fall, which is just around the corner!  I have taken several excellent Craftsy courses since joining the site, and I've reviewed many of them right here on my blog: Amigurumi Woodland Animals Review #1  with Stacey Trock Amigurumi Woodland Animals Review #2  with Stacey Trock Celtic Cables  with Carol Feller (includes link for 30% off class registration) Crochet Lab  with Vickie Howell Crochet: Beyond Rectangles  with Linda Permann Custom Cabled Pullovers  (includes link for 50% off class registration) Know Your Wool (free class!)  with Deb Robson Mittens and Gloves Galore  with Marly Bird (includes link for 50% off class registration) How to Say It: Pattern Writing for Knitters  with Edie Eckman There are lots of new a...

Last weekend, I finished my handspun Terra Shawl ! It took pretty much both weekend days of working faithfully on the border stitch pattern, but I was so excited to finish that I didn't even think about working on anything else! As you can see, it's quite large, and it's soft and squishy, too! I've been wrapping myself up in it all week since it's still quite chilly here in Chicago. You may recall that I purchased the fiber from WEBS at the beginning of the year - 12 oz. total of Abstract Fibers' Targhee Top in the Gorge colorway. I started spinning it near the end of January and continued to work on it ever-so-slowly throughout February and into the beginning of March ! Thankfully, knitting the shawl was much faster than spinning the fiber into a usable yarn; the entire shawl  was completed in just 13 days! I used Jared Flood's Terra  shawl pattern from Brooklyn Tweed, which was super-easy to follow, and US 9 Nova Cubics needles from Knitter's...

Hooray, the Mountain Moss shawl is finally done - happy FO Friday indeed! Yesterday I removed all of the pins and wove in the ends; after a rainy start to the day, the sun came out and I was able to get a few shots of my pretty new shawl. I love it! Pattern: Mountain Moss Shawl by Beth Kling from the Summer 2013 issue of Pom Pom Quarterly Yarn: The Wool Dispensary Deadly Restorative in Vortex Shawl Pin: Knitter's Pride Exotica Series  - "Dittany" style Needles: Knitter's Pride Karbonz Interchangeables I've got more handspun goodness to share today, but this time it's a double whammy: hand-dyed skeins of handspun yarn! Last weekend, my pal Lauren and I embarked on some natural dyeing adventures using some sumac and marigolds Lauren had collected for the purposes of our experiments. I had some navajo plied Finn skeins and a couple of 2-ply Polwarth skeins ready to dye. First, I soaked them in water to prepare for their mordant bath. After mordantin...

I finished my third and final Malabrigo March project on the last day of the month (with a few hours to spare!). I ended up using a small amount of Arroyo in Escorias that was left over from the Mushin Cowl as a contrast color once it became obvious that I would run out of Plomo before getting to the border. It was just my good luck that I liked the way they look together! Basically, I knit the body til I ran out of yarn, then picked up stitches for the border and began the long, slow process of an i-cord bindoff. I had about 5g of Plomo reserved for finishing each sleeve, which worked out pretty well - all told, I probably had 4-5 yards of Plomo left over. I spent last Sunday morning weaving in the ends, and then there was the moment of truth: trying it on. It even fits! It's not totally perfect, but considering what a random experiment it was, I'm pretty pleased with the results. For those of you who missed earlier posts about this project, I used an app called Raglan...