handmade by stefanie

Hooray, the Mountain Moss shawl is finally done - happy FO Friday indeed! Yesterday I removed all of the pins and wove in the ends; after a rainy start to the day, the sun came out and I was able to get a few shots of my pretty new shawl. I love it! Pattern: Mountain Moss Shawl by Beth Kling from the Summer 2013 issue of Pom Pom Quarterly Yarn: The Wool Dispensary Deadly Restorative in Vortex Shawl Pin: Knitter's Pride Exotica Series  - "Dittany" style Needles: Knitter's Pride Karbonz Interchangeables I've got more handspun goodness to share today, but this time it's a double whammy: hand-dyed skeins of handspun yarn! Last weekend, my pal Lauren and I embarked on some natural dyeing adventures using some sumac and marigolds Lauren had collected for the purposes of our experiments. I had some navajo plied Finn skeins and a couple of 2-ply Polwarth skeins ready to dye. First, I soaked them in water to prepare for their mordant bath. After mordantin...

Happy WIP Wednesday! I had quite the productive weekend - first, I finished the front piece for my Emmanuelle sweater. It's now blocking on my massage table in the craft room, though I probably won't get a chance to sit down and seam until next week. I also finished the Mountain Moss Shawl from Pom Pom Quarterly - it's just about dry, so I'm hoping to get a few photos snapped in time for FO Friday!  Don't you love my lace-blocking setup? I actually do have blocking mats, but I kind of prefer the CB2 box for some reason.  Finally, I decided to bust out the Nova Cubics interchangeable tips to knit a few handspun hats - if I'm going to be spinning a bunch of yarn during Spinzilla , I'd better make some room in my overflowing handspun bin! Here's the hat I currently have in progress - the yarn is some merino I spun up earlier this year; it's a very dark grey with little bits of color here and there. I bought the fiber several years ago a...

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 !

Happy WIP Wednesday! Thanks for joining me this week; I only have a few projects that I can share on this blog (the rest are top secret!). I was really hoping I'd be finished with my Emmanuelle sweater sleeves for this week's WIP Wednesday blog post, but I feel just short of my goal: On the plus side, I made a decent amount of progress on my Mountain Moss Shawl since last week: Over the weekend, I started a Panda Puppet from Itty Bitty Toys when I realized I hadn't made any projects using books from my library since June. It's also a destash project, which is another goal of mine for 2013. So far I just have the first half of the puppet body finished: Thanks for joining me this week! For more WIP Wednesday inspiration, visit the  Tami's Amis Blog !

At last, I have photos to share of my greatest sweater-knitting accomplishment to date: my Fieldwork Cardigan knit in Sincere Sheep yarn! This has been finished for a while, but it's been a little tough finding the right time to take photos; I always knew where  I wanted to take photos, however! There is an art space we pass frequently on our way to New Wave Coffee that occasionally has interesting things appear in it: fake meteors on wires stuck in to the ground, pop-up shops, and most recently, this random sign: Who knows how long it will be there? Not me, but I'm glad that we've captured this little bit of Chicago ephemera while we could. This is Tyler's favorite shot: Getting back to the sweater....I am in love with this! I know that I haven't styled it like the pattern photos (which are totally cute), but I really like wearing it as an open cardigan. I can already tell that this will be one of my favorites this fall. The pattern was well-wri...

Over the weekend, I met my goal to finish the first sweater piece for the Fieldwork Cardigan : Of course, unblocked, it just looks plain weird, but that is the sleeve and one half of the back of the sweater. The pattern is from the new Pom Pom Quarterly (you can read my recent review here ) and I'm using some gorgeous hand-dyed yarn from the Sincere Sheep ! I visited family over the weekend and made some major progress on my Freia Cowl . It's now at that difficult-to-photograph phase, which means I am very close to being done: Finally, Tyler and I went to the a free show downtown (Speck Mountain and Sharon Van Etten) on Monday night, which was the perfect time to work on my Baah! socks . I even got the heel turned and made it nearly all the way through the gusset shaping: Tyler took some really cool photos at the show - the show took place in the Pritzker Pavilion , which was designed by Frank Gehry and is pretty cool to look at, much less sit in and enjoy music....

Ever since its launch one year ago, Pom Pom Quarterly has been one of those publications I knew I should keep my eye on. Each issue has had at least a few patterns that piqued my curiosity, but I never purchased an issue til now: with postage and the exchange rate, I wound up paying about $20 USD for the printed copy (which includes a PDF download as well). I know that seems pretty steep, but the Summer 2013 issue celebrating Pom Pom's one-year anniversary is just too good to pass up...and worth every penny! The paper stock is good quality (and smells great, if that's the kind of thing you're into!), and every page is printed in full color. There are many photos of each pattern - all 7 patterns include well-written instructions with schematics and charts and are mostly knit with indie-dyed yarn (Yarn Love, The Uncommon Thread, Skein, and Sweet Georgia, for example). There are three interesting feature articles and two pages with technique illustrations, plus a deliciou...

Over the weekend, I finished all of my WIPS, so this week I have all new projects to show off this week! My friend Julie was in town, so we made a trip up to Windy Knitty for a little stash enhancement. I finally picked up two skeins of Freia Flux , which I've been wanting to try out for a while now, and immediately cast on for a simple cowl to show off the hand-dyed gradient colors: I also cast on for another pair of socks using a test color (I think!) of Baah! La Jolla ; they are a pattern from my back catalog that I will be updating once these new socks are finished. I was never happy with the photographs of this design, which is based on a vintage stitch; the pattern could use some gussying-up as well, so later this summer there will be a re-launch for my Scalloped Ribs sock pattern (and anyone who has already purchased this pattern will of course get a free upgrade!). Finally, the new issue of Pom Pom Quarterly arrived in the mail last Thursday - I was impressed with ...