handmade by stefanie

I first heard about SilverSpun yarn from the Feel Good Yarn Company over on my pal Allyson's blog . It popped up again as a reward for the Woolly App Kickstarter, and finally I ended up connecting with Laurie, the woman behind it all. She sent me a skein of SilverSpun yarn to try out, and I couldn't wait to cast on! Since the pure silver that is spun throughout the yarn has therapeutic properties, I thought a pair of fingerless mitts would be a good project. It should also be noted that the silver lends the yarn conductive properties as well, which means that you can knit a pair of gloves and use them to operate any touch-screen device while wearing them! Anyway, I went the fingerless mitt route and made the Dalkey Mitts from Carol Feller's Contemporary Irish Knits . This is the first project in my never-ending quest to see how many projects I can make from books already on my shelf, might I add! There were several pleasant surprises about this yarn: first, I was...

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...

Since I finished my final Malabrigo March project over the weekend (which I'll blog about this Friday), I decided to start swatching for my next sweater project. Though it's still pretty chilly in these parts, I expect any day now I'll be in need of yet another cropped cardigan, and I just happened to have the yarn and pattern for Marly Bird's Breezy Bolero waiting in the wings. I whipped up my first swatch and discovered that I've become quite the loose knitter, so I'm working on swatch number 2 with slightly smaller needles. Hopefully that'll do the trick and I can cast on soon! I've also made some major progress on the Destash Constitution Hall Scarf  - as you can see, I've started the next phase of striping! I even snuck in a few rows while at the sold out Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds show this past Monday. I know it's slightly off-topic, but I feel the need to write about it because we had front row tickets (which we didn't find ou...

After making the decision to put my Destash Dolman to sleep for a bit, I comforted myself by casting on for two new knitting projects. The first is a pair of gloves for Tyler, whose current gloves keep springing holes (they were, after all, knit in 2008 ). The new gloves will look an awful lot like the old ones, being that they're his favorite color (or not-color, if you prefer), black. I am, however, using a different yarn entirely - this time, a 100% BFL worsted-weight yarn that I purchased at the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival last fall. It's a huge skein, so gloves are just the beginning! As you can see, I've accomplished a lot in just a few days' time - I'm already on the second glove! I'm using Marly Bird's 5 in 1 Adventure pattern, which is a part of her excellent Mittens and Glove Galore class on Craftsy , in which I am enrolled, so be looking for my full review here on this blog soon. In the mean time, if you can't wait to hear my t...