handmade by stefanie

Yesterday, in between random showers of tiny snowflakes and balls of ice, I saw a window of opportunity to run outside and take some photos for today's post - or so I thought. All was clear until I started actually taking photos, at which point tiny snowballs rained down upon me and blew into frame. It's springtime in Chicago, folks. You just have to go along with it...what else can you do, really? So, here is my Cashmere/Yak/Silk hat , with snow, and also the awesome Darth Vader mug that Tyler bought at a comic book store in Berlin, because the snow started coming down and I had my tea in one hand and both of these FOs in another - so I just started throwing things everywhere to get the photos taken as quickly as possible. This hat is SO SOFT. I held a strand of Xanadu and a strand of Shangri-La together. It was a match made in heaven. Oh, and those faint white streaks on the image above that are mostly near the tea mug? That's tiny snow pellets being blown across t...

Last weekend I finished the monster from Modern Baby Crochet - look at how cute he turned out! I decided to crochet the eyes all in one piece, which meant that he couldn't be googly-eyed as in the pattern photos, but it did save me some additional sewing, which is always a good thing in my book. The triangular shape makes it easy to put his cuteness on display; he kind of looks like a cross between a monster and a slug or snail! I used nearly the entire skein of Lindon Merino from Three Irish Girls; the name of the colorway is "Rhys," which just happens to be the same name as one of my nephews. The rest of the yarn came from leftover bits and bobs in my stash. My only other FO for this week is this slouchy hat which I designed with my grey Gotland handspun yarn; the pattern is available for free right here on this blog and you can queue it here on Ravelry ! Thanks for stopping by this week - for FO Friday inspiration, visit the  Tami's Amis blog . Ha...

Photo courtesy of the American Gotland Sheep Society. I was thrilled to come across some Grey Gotland roving at the SOAR marketplace last fall. Gotland is very similar to the breed of sheep used to make Elven cloaks for the Lord of the Rings,  Stansborough Greys . Gotland sheep originated in Sweden (and are still raised there today); they were brought to New Zealand in the 1970s, where they developed their own distinctive traits, in part due to the breeding practices by Barry and Cheryl Eldridge. The Stansboroughs came to be recognized as a breed of sheep in their own right in 2005. While I have yet to come across bona fide Stansborough fleece to spin, I was quite happy with my experience with Gotland. It's very dense and silky - almost heavy-feeling, yet it was fairly easy to spin. It has a halo similar to mohair, and though I've read that commercially-prepared Gotland top has a matte, slightly coarse quality, I didn't find this to be true of the fiber I spun (if yo...