handmade by stefanie

Head's up - this week only, I have a killer deal on luxury sock yarn mini skein grab bags in my Etsy shop : over 100g of fingering weight yarn for only $15! If you live in the US, that includes postage, and it's not much more to ship to Canada. Many of the yarns and colors are unique, hard-to-find, one-of-a-kind, exclusive, discontinued....you get the idea! Also, if you have a reasonable request (i.e. colors you love, colors you hate, no variegated colors, etc.), I am totally happy to honor that as I pack up your skeins. Oh, and I have a habit of including fun freebies with each order! Convinced? Click here to snag yours , there are only a limited quantity up for grabs! When they're gone, they'd gone!

My needles are spoiled this week! I'm (still) working with some heavenly yak yarn from Bijou Basin Ranch and making sloooooooooow progress on my chevron socks : As if that weren't enough, I was given a skein of Zealana AIR Chunky at TNNA, which is pretty much the definition of luxury. It's a blend of cashmere, possum and silk, and as the name would imply, it truly is light as air. It's also incredibly soft and warm! Late last week, I decided to make a pair of fingerless gloves and cast on for a pair of Maine Morning Mitts by Clara Parkes from the Knitter's Book of Yarn. Little did I know that tagging Ms. Parkes herself on instagram would elicit a response ! This simple knit is just flying off the needles - all I need is to make the thumbs and I'm good to go! 90% of mitt #2 was completed last night at knit night, if that gives you any indication to just how quickly these can be made. In other news, I have - at long last - finished spinning the singles ...

Welcome to the first installment to what I hope is a regular feature here on this blog - See it Swatched . My goal is to try out new yarns (and sometimes revisit old favorites), sharing my thoughts and feedback as well as showing what each yarn looks knitted, crocheted, and woven; since I'm not a weaver, I'll be using my Schacht Zoom Loom for the woven swatch. I admit that I am not a very enthusiastic swatcher, so I thought that this would be a good way for me to make friends with the swatching process and maybe even learn a few things along the way. I'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions for this new feature so that I can refine the concept for future posts!  Anzula Cloud A few years ago, a friend gifted me a skein of Anzula Cloud . It was beautiful in the skein, but that was nothing compared to the experience of knitting with it, much less wearing the finished garment! I ended up using it for the second Stephen West Mystery KAL, Rockefeller . I pai...

There aren't many FO's I can share with you these days, so I'd like to share something cool from my crafty friend Lauren, who recently used my Whale Chart for an unexpected endeavor...I would like to present to my dear readers the first-ever "put a whale on it" fuse bead ornament! It probably won't surprise you to learn that I succumbed to a few Black Friday/Cyber Monday yarn sales. Even if you only read this blog occasionally, I'm sure you've figured out by now that I am incredibly weak-willed when it comes to all things yarn and fiber. At any rate, my first order showed up earlier this week - another skein of Tundra in Scotia Sea (I want to make the Arctic Circle cowl to coordinate with my mittens !) and the last skein of Swan's Island Organic worsted in the limited-edition colorway, Sugar Maple. I can't wait to knit with it - the color is even prettier in person and it's very soft! I was also thrilled to finally get my hot little ...

I  know it's not knitting-related, but I'd like to update everyone on my band's Kickstarter project which is coming down to the wire - as I write this, we have 51 hours to reach our funding goal (we're just $243 away). You can get the details on my initial blog post or even on our Kickstarter project page , but the long and short of it is that we wanted to do a series of 7" vinyl singles with really cool hand-drawn art. Each single will feature cover art by a different artist (my husband Tyler, a few of our friends, and me) and, let's face it, vinyl is just awesome. We'll also be offering MP3 versions of the songs for our fans that don't own record players (or just want to listen to them on their iPod). The songs are already recorded, mixed and mastered - we just need to raise the funds to press them to vinyl and release them!  Click here to make your pledge if you need some new music to knit to, especially if you need to find that transcendent...