handmade by stefanie

I finished my Emmanuelle Sweater a few weeks ago, and it's been in heavy rotation ever since. It's hard to believe that this is the first chance I've gotten to take proper photographs, but that's just how things have been lately. This is the second sweater pattern I've knit by the designer, Mercedes Tarasovitch-Clark , and I really like the way it fits. I'm not super-great at intarsia, so I do find myself wishing that my chevrons were a little neater; if I were doing it all over again, I think I would knit the front and back pieces and then add in the chevrons with duplicate stitch afterwards just because I hate intarsia so much. I realize that is a totally insane notion to even entertain, but that should only speak to my true feelings where intarsia is concerned. Maybe someday I'll make friends with this technique, but it's not likely to happen any time soon. At any rate, the instructions were easy to follow and I had no issues with my yarn subst...

I finally have an exciting update on my Emmanuelle Sweater : I've started the Chevrons on the front piece! Woo hoo! So far, so good; I'm hoping the other colors I have planned will play well with everything else. With any luck, I can get this final piece knitted by the end of next week, which means I am on track for finishing this by the end of the month (I hope I didn't just jinx myself there). This would mean that it'll be one of the fastest adult-sized sweaters I've knit to date. I've also made some major progress on the Mountain Moss lace edging and it should be finished by the end of this coming weekend, too - which means I can start something new! I still have plenty of gift projects to knock out between now and December, so I'll be less stressed once I can finish this 'selfish' project and get back to gift knitting/crocheting. Of course, life has a way of throwing monkey wrenches into the best-laid plans, doesn't it? First, I'...

I made some serious progress on my main WIPs over the holiday weekend - which is great, because I really need to shift focus to holiday gift-making. On Monday, I finished the back piece for my Emmanuelle sweater and started the front piece, which will be the most exciting because it actually involves the chevrons! A large, gray stockinette sweater half isn't too thrilling photo-wise, so I didn't end up trying to take a shot to share today. I just wanted to mention it since it's the fastest I've ever knit a sweater piece! The main story this week is that I started the lace border on my Mountain Moss shawl . It's definitely going to be a long process, since it's worked sideways across the live stitches of the shawl body. My goal is to be finished by the end of this coming weekend - it might be kind of a stretch, but I'll give it my best shot! Thanks for joining me this week! For more WIP Wednesday inspiration, visit the  Tami's Amis Blog !

Here we go again....startitis has set in once again! I am trying to concentrate on gift-making this month since there are many birthdays in my family this fall with the holiday season not far behind. Of course, when a beautiful new set of needles arrives on your doorstep, are you really going to NOT take them for a test drive? Karbonz Starter Set - there are actually 5 sizes, but I am already knitting with two of them! Sure, I could just find a gift project that uses any one of the five sizes in the set, but it sure is a lot more fun to cast on for a few selfish knitting projects. I started with the Mountain Moss Shawl from the Summer issue of Pom Pom Quarterly using the Wool Dispensary yarn I bought during last week's yarn crawl : Then the fall issue of Knitscene arrived, and I did a little stash diving to start the Emmanuelle sweater by Mercedes Tarasovitch-Clark: As you can see, I started with the sleeves two-at-a-time; I'm using Stitch Nation Bamboo Ew...