handmade by stefanie

It's that magical time again, when I evaluate the previous months' goals and set some new ones for the month ahead. The last couple of months, I haven't done so well with staying on track, but I think I fared a little better for June, hooray! Michigan Tee: Done! JUNE GOALS: 1. Finish my  Lake Michigan Tee  - DONE! Finally! I blogged about it here .  2. Spinning Project: Some of the fibers I've recently stashed are calling to me! I actually finished two handspinning projects last month, a 4oz braid of fiber from the Cloudlover Fiber Club and 4oz of BFL from Mountain Colors . 3.  Finish & release a   new design  in  Baah Yarn . Wah wah....my designs in progress (yes, plural) have fallen by the wayside in the wake of increased work duties and responsibilities. This continues to be my white whale! 4. Knit swatches for a few designs that have been percolating in my head for way too long. I have been swatching and sketching! My ideas...

Welcome back to another guest post from the Take 5 Blog Series ! Today's blogger is the top spinner for #TeamLouet for the past 2 years of Spinzilla; last year, she was among the overall Top 5 spinners for the entire event, clocking in at 26,384 yards! She definitely played a huge role in our team's third place finish last year, and I consider Alexis to be our not-so-secret weapon. I asked her to share some of her tips for spinning at maximum speed with my blog readers this week. Enjoy! If you’re thinking ahead, July's Tour de Fleece  can be a great warm up for Spinzilla , a time to try new techniques and fibres and maybe even time yourself to discover how to maximize yardage in your available spinning time. Of course there are other times one might give a thought to speedy spinning…...winter fast approaching, dire need of a new sweater? Or perhaps a sheep to shawl competition (I’ve never participated in one but I would love to)?  Fibre stash threatening to take over yo...

The handspinning obsession continues! I was recently sent 4oz of BFL spinning fiber from Mountain Colors to try out, and as soon as it arrived I couldn't wait to give it a spin - I don't think it lasted more than a few days in the house before I started to play with it. This is the Sun River colorway, which is described on the website as "bright violet and red-orange blended with deep burgundy and wine." Definitely an apt description! The 100% Blue Faced Leicester top is available in 28 hand-dyed colorways total ( click here to see all of the Mountain Colors yarn and fiber offerings; about midway down the page, you can see info about their spinning fiber and available colorway). At first touch, I would have classified this BFL to be in the middle range of general BFL softness; after spinning it, however, I would definitely move the needle towards the softer end of the spectrum, however. It DEFINITELY became softer as I spun with it! I decided to predraft my fi...

Last Friday, after a very long week, I decided to take the afternoon off of work....to reorganize my handspun yarn and fiber stash?! Indeed, that is what I ended up doing, and I discovered that I have accumulated SO MUCH handspun yarn that it no longer fit in the medium sized bin I've been using the past several years....and it was time to graduate to a much larger 66 qt. container. Naturally, this new container is now completely filled, as is the medium sized bin which formerly housed my handspun yarn and now kinda sorta but not really holds all of my spinning fiber stash: As you saw last week , I was already inspired to start making projects with handspun yarn, and this little exercise has only reinforced everything! On Saturday, I decided that I needed to make a baby sweater with some delightfully squishy handspun polwarth yarn I'd also dyed myself (because just knitting a baby gift with normal yarn is no longer enough). I have a couple of old standby baby sweaters I ...

Congrats to  sisterrobinson , you are the lucky winner! I will contact you on Ravelry to arrange for the delivery of your prize. Thanks to everyone who entered this month's giveaway; if you didn't win, I encourage you to visit the ModeKnit Yarns website and give their yarns a try! Also, I'm having a luxury sock yarn mini skein grab bag sale in my Etsy shop , this week only! Enter HBSBLOG at checkout to get $3 off your order now through Midnight CDT on Friday, June 26. All US orders ship free via USPS First Class! I've added some pretty stellar yarns to the already-awesome lineup. There are hand-dyed yarns such Anzula, Leading Men Fiber Arts, and Manos del Uruguay plus other high-quality yarns such as Spud & Chloe Fine, Louet Gems Fingering, and more - and if you are looking for particular colors (or have other reasonable requests), I am happy to do what I can to put together a grab bag you'll love. You can see a full list of yarns & get more info abou...

Hello there, new sweater! I've kind of been holding out on you: this project has technically been finished since June 10, but I didn't get a chance to block it out til last weekend, and I really didn't want to share it until I had some awesome photos of a totally washed-and-blocked sweater to share! If you've been following my progress, you may already know that I started this project back in April, when I found the perfect skein of hand-dyed grey yarn at the Leading Men Fiber Arts booth at YarnCon. I used the mondo skein Soliloquy in London Fog ( a BFL sock yarn) to knit the yoke of the sweater, and it enabled me to destash two more skeins of yarn from the coffers: Top Draw Socks from Skein Yarn (Knight, the variegated colorway which comprises most of the sweater body) and a skein of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock I dyed with my own personal color I call Inky. The Lake Michigan Tee is part of Allyson Dykhuizen's collection in the Summer 2015 issue of K...

Now that I have a long-term project off the needles, I'm excited to work on some smaller projects which are a little more instant-gratification! This week, I'm working on a trio of Tiny Hedgehogs from the kit I bought at Windy Knitty a while back (you can also buy one here on the Mochimochiland website ). I also am working on some crocheted baby converse booties for the next wave of kiddos who will be arriving later this year. I'm not sure I'm totally sold on this particular pattern (it's available for free on Ravelry, and you KNOW how I feel about free patterns!), but I'll see it through to the end. Who knows, maybe it'll all come together and look awesome! And then, late Monday night, after a very eventful evening of monsoon-like rain, flooding, tornado sirens, and a Blackhawks Stanley Cup win, I decided to start some Pookies with little bits of leftover handspun yarn....as one does! Those are all of my WIPs for now - don't forget to check ...