handmade by stefanie

A few months ago at TNNA, I had the pleasure of chatting with the folks from Abuelita Yarns , a yarn company located in Uruguay. They have a lovely range of hand-dyed 100% merino and merino-blend yarns, and I was attracted to their booth by the beautiful braids of merino they had on display. They kindly allowed me to take a few home to spin up and write about on my blog. Something I discovered by visiting their website is their commitment to use fiber from happy sheep -by this I mean healthy, well-cared for sheep. Abuelita has even obtained a  certificate of non-mulesing , a hotly disputed practice which will turn up some pretty grotesque descriptions and photos if you choose to google it. They also pledge to protect the environment in Uruguay through various conservation efforts which you can read about in greater detail   here on their website . Sustainability and social responsibility is something that is important to many of us in the fiber community, so I hope that th...

I'm sure today's FO projects are no surprise to returning readers - nonetheless, I am beyond pleased to present my finished cardigan from the 30-Day Sweater Challenge! Rather than using the framework provided to design my own sweater (trust me, that's next on my list once I finish my holiday gift-making), I applied the concepts of the 30 Day Sweater ebook to a pattern I purchased on Ravelry, Bonne Marie Burns' Uma Cardigan . When I printed out my pattern, I assigned 30 Day Sweater outline . This proved to be an enormous help, because it broke everything into manageable tasks and also encouraged a little healthy competition not to fall behind. a day to each step along the way that corresponded with the Another thing I really liked was all of the moral support I got along the way from the Yarn Nation crew and my fellow challenge-takers: the live Sweater Knitting Show every weekday, the virtual knit night each Wednesday evening, and the social media channels (Rave...