handmade by stefanie

Recently, I was given a test dye lot of yarn to play around with. I wasn't quite sure how much yardage was in the test skein, so I figured that one of Hunter Hammersen's Curls would be a great way to test out the yarn and knit a project without fear of playing yarn chicken. Eventually, I'd like to knit all of the Curls patterns, but this is only my second project from the book. I chose the Argent pattern, which ended up to be fairly easy to memorize. The yarn base here is a 50/50 yak and silk from Bijou Basin Ranch called Shangri-La . It's absolutely gorgeous, both to work with and the resulting fabric. It really makes dealing with those tiny needles worth it, and after seeing what beautiful drape the resulting project has, I may have to reconsider my stance on using lace weight yarn in future projects!

My first Curl was finished at the beginning of the month! I started Caesious way back in January for the informal KAL in Hunter Hammersen's Ravelry group . Things kept popping up to distract me from working on it, but at last I got back on task and finished it up. The stitch pattern was easy to memorize and perfect for my variegated handspun yarn, spun from Malabrigo Nube . It's squishy and soft and fun to wear; I'm thinking of adding a button so that I can take advantage of the openwork stitch pattern which can serve as de facto buttonholes. I love that I was able to use up pretty much all of my yarn (I had a small amount left over which I used to wrap a birthday present); that's the beauty of the patterns from Curls - you just knit until you run out of yarn! I definitely plan to knit more patterns from this book! If you missed my review, click here to check it out . Have a crafty weekend!

Though the Caesious KAL is over(ish), I'm still plugging away at mine since I pretty much only work on it outside of the house - it's great for riding the CTA and taking to knit night! There really isn't much of a difference since last week, so I thought I'd go with a more interesting photo this week just to spice things up. Over the weekend, I started the first sleeve on my Block Island Pullover - although I didn't make it far: Both of these are slow going, though, because I have to spend most of my crafting time working on two new top-secret designs! Well, I am allowed to share some sneak peeks here and there...for instance, this beautiful and colorful skein of yarn came into my life recently, and it is going to become something fun! Of course, I wouldn't be me if I didn't totally distract myself by starting an new project which will likely take years to complete. Seriously, what was I thinking when I decided to start a worsted weight mite...

Over the weekend, I finished the front piece of my Block Island pullover - I am now just two sleeves away from a finished sweater!  Unfortunately, I haven't gotten around to starting one of those sleeves, because most of my crafting time has been spent swatching for some upcoming designs. I did manage to squeeze in a little spinning time over the weekend, since I couldn't resist diving into the merino/alpaca fiber I'd recently dyed . This single spun like a dream, there was hardly any vege matter or guard hairs to slow me down. I'm now debating whether or not I want to N-ply it, or split it between two bobbins for a 2-ply. The fiber is HANDSPIN , which is new from Blue Sky Alapcas. It's definitely worth checking out!  I did make a little bit of progress on my Caesious , though it's probably hard to tell at this point:  That pretty much wraps it up for WIPs this week - thanks for stopping by!

First off, I'd like to announce the winner of my giveaway! Congrats to komclaughlin, I will contact you to find out where to mail your copy of Curls by Hunter Hammersen . Thanks to everyone who entered my giveaway; I hope you'll continue to read my blog, because I have more fun things planned for this year (and yes, even some more giveaways). And now, on to the WIPs....I started one new project this week, the Foliage Cowl by Patty Nance, which I cast on for the Holla Knits KAL . I'm using two skeins of Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Bulky in Blackberry, which I won during a Holla Knits subscriber giveaway last year. I'm still making progress on the Block Island Pullover - I finished the back on Monday night and am now working on the front: I haven't been working on my handspun Caesious as much, but I think it's still grown since this time last week : Perhaps the most exciting progress to report is the near-completion of the MCN baby sweater in Frill...

Instead of making sweeping resolutions of all of 2015 which I will probably forget about by the spring, I have decided to set monthly goals for the sake of manageablility. I know there are several bloggers who have been using this idea to great effect (though can I pull any of those names out of the air right now as I type?! No! If you can recall the names of these blogs, please feel free to name-check and post links in the comments!), so I don't think I'm really introducing a novel concept per se. However, it's already February and I haven't mentioned anything about my 2015 crafting goals yet, with the exception of talking about a monthly spinning project here . For shame! In addition to a monthly spinning project, I want to could get through my design backlog and publish something new at least every other month. Originally, I wanted to shoot for  every month, but I know that's just not practical for me, especially when designing is still very much a side gi...