handmade by stefanie

As I mentioned during my Ply Away recap, I took a class about Fractal Spinning that was taught by Jillian Moreno and have come home with toms of exciting ideas to try out. Of course, my first order of business was to knit swatches with my class samples so that I could see the finished products. Last weekend, I finished and blocked all 3 swatches using one of my favorite blocking tools from Knitter's Pride: Knitter's Pride Knit Blockers at Patternworks My first swatch is a 2-ply spun from fiber dyed in an ABCABC repeating pattern. I divided the fiber in half and spun the first ply with one of the halves as-is; the second half was divided into fourths and then spun in sequential order to preserve the color pattern. My second swatch is a 3-ply spun from fiber dyed in a palindrome pattern. I began with splitting the fiber into thirds for each ply; the first ply was spun as-is, the second ply was spun with the fiber further divided into thirds, and the third was spun with t...

I was pretty psyched to hear about the Ply Away retreat in my hometown of Kansas City (brought to you by the editors of Ply Magazine), and knew that it was quite likely I'd end up going, since I had a free place to stay in town with my family. This year has been off to a busy start, so why not include a short little jaunt to Kansas City this month? I flew down on Thursday with the intention of spending part of Friday and Saturday at the marketplace, and then taking my first-ever official spinning class on Sunday morning - Fractal Spinning with Jillian Moreno. That's more or less how things played out, though there was the added element of some family stuff mixed in - my grandpa was released from rehab after emergency hip replacement surgery a few months back, only to fall down, sprain his wrist, and - eventually - be readmitted to the care facility he was released from 48 hours prior within the time span of my visit. Thankfully he is doing quite well now, and I was glad I wa...