handmade by stefanie

Foliage Hat: I have the worst poker face. One week down, three to go! Malabrigo Stockpile is off to a great start - I've already completed two projects and cast on for two more!  My non-stockpile projects aren't feeling terribly neglected, either (well, I still need to start the sleeves for Tyler's sweater, but I'm pretty sure that will happen sometime this week, if not this weekend).   Here's the lowdown: 1.  Foliage Hat - Malabrigo Worsted in Vaa (to replace the one I lost a few years ago) Finished! 2.  Madison Hand Warmers - Malabrigo Worsted in Vaa (to match hat) Finished! 3.  Metheglin Cowl - Malabrigo Rios in Solis and whatever odds and sods I have sitting around in Worsted , Twist or Rios ! Madison Mitts at twilight. 4.  Robin's Egg Blue Hat - Malabrigo Chunky in Charrua (my favorite color!) In Progress 5.  Travel Shawl - Malabrigo Sock in Aguas In Progress 6.  Button Bunnies - a ginormous version in Malabr...

Hooray!  Sad Sack September is almost over!  I can't think of a better way of celebrating than caving in to my startitis and casting on for lots of small (and not-so-small) projects using yarn I shopped from my stash.  That might be the silver lining to this whole dead car debaucle/smashed laptop screen ridiculousness - rediscovering the joy of shopping my own stash!  I have some amazing yarns that need to see the light of day, beginning with my mmmmmmmMalabrigo. A month's worth of knitting? So here's my list of projects I'd like to complete for this month's Malabrigo Stockpile event - ALL of the yarn is from my stash.  It's an ambitious list, for sure, but I'll be happy if I complete only half of this list!  1.  Foliage Hat - Malabrigo Worsted in Vaa (to replace the one I lost a few years ago) 2.  Madison Hand Warmers - Malabrigo Worsted in Vaa (to match hat) 3.  Metheglin Cowl - Malabrigo Rios in Solis and whatever odds and s...

Now that we have a comfy new couch, it's time to accessorize....which of course means knitting some enormous monsters to stand (or sit) guard!  This yarn is one of the first purchases I made when I started working at Lorna's Laces - a few skeins of Revelation that had attempted to be Aslan, gone horribly awry - but once dipped in some Carol Green, an unfortunate turn of events was magically transformed into some awesomely variegated yarn...which is how a lot of my "one-of-a-kind" stash was born.  Pattern:  Iris the Gourmet Monster by Rebecca Danger Yarn:  Lorna's Laces Revelation - custom  color (in the neighborhood of Carol Green) Needles:  US #9 Original Date of Queue:  2/17/10 What should I name this big squishy bugaboo?!?

Tuesday night It's been a pretty weird week in Chicago - I can't think of any time I've witnessed such snowy madness (unless you count any time it snowed in Portland, where even an inch could shut the entire city down).  Luckily I have plenty of yarn on hand in the event of a snowpocalypse, and our new couch was delivered the day before.  That's pretty lucky!  Just this week alone, I think we've gotten our money's worth as we've clocked some serious couch-breaking-in hours.  I had a lot of non-knitting to-do's to acccomplish earlier in the week, but I did manage to finish a new work hat for Tyler - his only cotton hat for work has seen better days.  This was a nice fast-knitting little hat, and it fits him perfectly!  Pattern:  Boarder's Beanie by Lauren Sanchez Original Date of Queue:  June 19, 2008 Yarn:  Knit Picks Simply Cotton Worsted in Envy Heather Our street, Wednesday afternoon On Wednesday I finished the Stephe...

Over the weekend, I was contacted by Stephen West regarding errata in the Lakedale Shawl pattern from Malabrigo Book 3 - as you can see, one side of this scarf is in broken rib, and one side is in seed stitch rib.  Apparently there were some pattern repeats missing from the book (the book has a 4-row repeat, but it should really be an 8-row repeat), causing the entire pattern to be in broken rib (I think I messed up an increase or two early on, resulting in the harlequin effect which is probably not evident in the squonchy* photo to the right).  Since this scarf is just for me, and I wasn't entirely sure it wasn't my operator error, I decided to press on instead of frog and begin again - plus, part of me was also curious whether or not I would have the correct stitch count by the time I reached the colorwork scallops.  Somehow I did, but instead of having 115 stitches on either side of the stitch markers, I had 116 stitches on the side with the seed stitch rib and 114 st...

In this, the third year of tagging projects 'destashXX' (XX being the last two digits of whatever year it happens to be) in order to see how much knitting can be done from one's stash, I would like to suggest a synergistic movement for the masses - allow me to invite you to the party that is De-Queue '11! The rules:  Anything you've queued prior to this year is game.  Tag your qualifying projects with 'queue11' - and for added fun, write the original date of queue in the project notes.  For the sake of anthropology, take stock right now and make a note of how many pages and projects you have in your queue before you begin this effort (feel free to leave said info as a comment here!  I love a wildly unscientific experiment!). Now, I've seen some people on Ravelry with some truly staggering and impressive queues.  When you've got double-digits happening, you don't mess around (or, perhaps, you just queue any project that you think is cool, rega...