handmade by stefanie

Earlier in the year, I hit a bit of a slump with my weaving - things just weren't turning out the way I imagined, and I found that I was avoiding my loom as a result. This made me think about the things I like to weave, and why I took up weaving in the first place. Some of my favorite projects were simple, plainweave scarves that use up leftover bits of yarn. Light bulb! After a complete dishtowel fail, I decided it was time to get back to destash weaving (someone on Instagram calls this weaving alchemy , which sounds way cooler). I used a skein of Berroco Vintage that was left over from one of Tyler's sweaters as a warp, and then collected several bits and bobs, mini skeins, samples, and handspun leftovers to create a long piece of fabric to sew into pillows. I tried not to overthink the color sequencing too much, but that's just kind of how I roll. When I reached the end of the warp, I had quite a substantial piece of fabric (naturally I forgot to measure it - doh):...

Sometimes, when you plan a project, it goes horribly wrong. For example, I was really excited to weave with some yarn I've been given at the Creativation trade show at the start of this year; my plan was to make a soft and squishy bath mat using some recycled organic cotton yarn as the warp and t-shirt yarn as the weft. However, my plans quickly fell apart when I started warping my loom and discovered that I had completely miscalculated the amount of yardage I would need for this project. I ran out of yarn pretty quickly, and discovered that it was nearly impossible to purchase this yarn online, either from a yarn store OR via someone's destash on Ravelry. It would have been such an awesome project... The problem with running out of yarn mid-warp is that you can't really take it off the loom and re-use it for something else. Once it's on, it's on, because it's such a pain to get off that you're better off just cutting your losses, quite literally. Th...

Not too long ago, I was sent a lovely box of yarns from Antonio and Molly Manzanares of  Shepherd's Lamb , a family-owned and -operated ranch in New Mexico. They raise a flock of Rambouillet and Navajo-Churro sheep to make organic their organic yarns which are processed and spun in the USA, then hand-dyed with low impact or natural dyes on site. I've never worked with Navajo-Churro before, so I gravitated towards these 6 colors and decided to do a gamp-style woven scarf (for any curious non-weavers out there, here is a great definition of a gamp ). The mix of natural/undyed yarns and naturally dyed colors was really fun to work with, and I have enough yarn left over to each one which I can use in future projects. Now that i know how each color interacts with one another, that will make choosing colors a lot easier ( click here to see what colors of Navajo-Churro yarn they currently have available ). I'm guessing that many of my readers have not worked wi...

At the start of 2017, I purchased a rigid heddle loom, determined to learn how to weave. Like any craft, the basics are fairly easy, but there is always much to learn and improve no matter your skill level, especially if you want to move beyond the basics. After a year of mostly-consistent weaving, I would label myself as a novice at best, and as I started looking at all of my weaving projects from 2017, I realized that each one taught me something valuable that I can take into Year Two of weaving. I hope other beginning weavers find this helpful, too - maybe it can shorten the learning curve for you just a bit! Project #2: Destash Scarf I may have gone overboard with planning this project to make up for not planning the other one - I very painstakingly went through my bits and bobs of leftover worsted weight yarn to select the perfect gradients of blue and green with some black and grey for good measure. Unfortunately, I didn't take fiber content into consideration when pla...

When the folks at Be Sweet yarns asked me to review Magic Ball, my immediate thought was that it would make a fabulous woven scarf! I asked if they could recommend some coordinating warp yarn as well, and they ended up sending me two skeins of Magic Ball in the Silver Lining colorway and 2 skeins of Mango Moon Yarns Di Lusso , a sparkly chainette yarn, in the Moonlight colorway. I hand't warped with a chainette yarn before, but it ended up being a great choice! I was a little worried it would be splitty, but that couldn't have been further from the truth. The yarn is very smooth and strong thanks to the blend of 48% Silk, 45% Viscose, 4% Lamé, and 3% Nylon. Each ball has about 65 yards, so I used nearly every bit of the two balls for my warp. Then came the fun part - weaving with the Magic Ball! I wound the first skein onto my stick shuttle and oohed  and aahed  over the succession of yarns, which the label describes as "a divine arrangement of hand dyed bouc...

Some of the newest projects I've started are mixing up my usual grey/blue/green color scheme with an unlikely hue: pink! It's not my favorite color by a long shot, but when you are knitting for people who do  like pink, then working with pink yarn just comes with the territory. For example, I started these two-at-a-time socks with a skein of Long Dog Yarn I picked up at Knit 1 earlier this year: Once I finish the never-ending  Starshower gradient cowl , I'll cast on for a hat with this Rambouillet yarn that I recently bought from Shepherd's Lamb : I'm also working on a design using a new yarn base from Bijou Basin Ranch called Himalayan Summit. Of the three variegated colors they currently have in this yarn, this is probably not the one you'd expect me to pick, but I just gravitated to it while I was in their booth at Wisconsin Sheep & Wool earlier this month. It's definitely not as pink as the other projects, but I won't be able ...

I finished another handspun scarf, and I think I'll have to keep this one for myself because I absolutely LOVE how it turned out! I used some commerically-made black yarn for the warp (I lost the label, it's leftover from some  project!), and then the weft is a 3-ply handspun yarn that I spun from 8oz of hand-dyed BFL fiber from Nerd Girl Yarns in the #hashtag colorway. Here's where I love the archive that both Ravelry and blogging provide: I would have never guessed that this yarn dates back to July 2014 ! Also, you can read more about the structure of this yarn here - it's an opposing ply, which is a little different than what I usually spin when making a 3-ply. There's quite a bit of yarn left over, and I'm wondering if I have enough to make another scarf. But for now, I've put on a warp for another new project, which was going to be another funky destash scarf, but then I realized that the yarns from my other recent weaving projects all l...

The ginormous yellow handspun wrap is still on the loom. I've woven about 35 inches, which is not quite halfway, but it's getting there. For the most part, I am loving how it's weaving up, although there is some warp wonkiness here and there: while it started out being very uniform in terms of tension, I now have a few misbehaving strands that need to have weights added to them. It's not the end of the world, but it seems like every time I advance the warp, a new issue pops up! I can deal with the many opportunities to learn something new from this project (even if it's what not to do), so long as I am liking the results - after all, this is only my fourth weaving project! I'm sure it will be many years before I have a weaving project that goes smoothly from start to finish. The weft yarn is spun from 8 oz of superwash merino from Cloudlover Fiber in the Quick's Point colorway she dyed for Knitting Sarah a few years back. I'm so bummed that Cl...

I finished my third woven project! Carl at Bijou Basin Ranch asked me to weave a sample to be displayed in their booth at the Intermountain Weaving Conference in July, and I couldn't resist the change to try weaving with this luxurious yarn! Since I'm still a total novice, we agreed upon a very simple scarf using two skeins of Lhasa Wilderness in one of my favorite new colorways, Joseph. I'm still really nervous to have my weaving work on display for Real Weavers to look at (gulp!), but at least I won't be there to hear them remark on my still-figuring-it-out selvedges. This is what I tell myself, anyway! I loved weaving with this yarn - it's a yak/bamboo blend that is a bit slippery, so it did take some getting used to. In my sample, you can totally see where I started to get the hang of it: Thankfully, my finished scarf looks a lot better than the above swatch. If you want to try weaving this scarf project, I've shared my calcs and supply ...