handmade by stefanie

After losing Tilly and Robin within a year of each other, I sure didn't think I'd be finding cat hair in my knitting any time soon. But the universe had other ideas. Over the winter, a white feral cat adopted us. I'd noticed her when we moved into our apartment last summer - I would see her hiding in the bushes or sunning herself in the grass when she thought no one was looking. I assumed she was someone's cat until I realized how skittish she was around humans, plus she had a tipped ear, which is a universal sign that a feral/stray cat has been spayed. Neighbors confirmed that she was a feral kitty (descended from several generations of feral cats, in fact), and that she has survived on her wits and whatever food various residents put out for her.  We had some bitterly cold days over the winter, and I just felt so sorry for this poor kitty! I started offering her treats and slowly gained her trust. She didn't even want to come inside our apartment at first, much le...

Well, that didn't take long. I started working at MSQC last December, and I've already completed my very first quilt project, a quilt-as-you-go hexagon tree skirt!  While I was waiting for more border/backing fabric for my quarantine quilt (which is also a quilt-as-you-go hexagon project), I decided to use all of the fabrics left over from making holiday masks last year by pairing them with a bright red solid fabric for the backing/border to make the hexagon tree skirt from BLOCK magazine (volume 7, issue 3 2020 for anyone who's interested). BLOCK is a Missouri Star publication, and when I started they gave me a few issues to page through to get a sense of what they were like. Right away, the tree skirt project jumped out to me, but I was hesitant to give it a try since I've never quilted anything, and my sewing skills are limited.  With the help of the tutorial video below, I started sewing hexies with leftover fabric and precut hexagon batting...which ended up being ...

Brown Sheep is one of the first yarns I ever knit with, and they have always had a special place in my heart - so when they asked me to team up for a mystery knit-along, of course I said yes! Now, I know that not everyone likes a mystery knit-along (or MKAL for short). In fact, I swore them off after being "tricked" into doing intarsia one too many times by Stephen West (said with tongue firmly in cheek). Not all mysteries are a delight to solve, but I promise this one will be.  My goal was to create a fun-to-knit shawl with an interesting detail to finish things off. I don't want to give too many things away, but if you like slipped stitches, stripes, and bold mosaic motifs all wrapped up in a symmetrical triangular shawl, then I think you will be happy with the finished project.  Not only that, but the pattern is available for FREE if you sign up for the Brown Sheep newsletter using this link . And if you want to buy the yarn I used for the pattern, you can pick 1 skein...

At the start of this year, I managed to knock one of my favorite cross stitch pieces off the wall it was hanging on, breaking the frame. Since the glass miraculously didn't break, I was hoping to glue the broken pieces of the frame together, but unfortunately it didn't work out.  Then I remembered the cool wooden frames from Modern Hoopla I'd spotted on Instagram, which are designed to fit a cross-stitch piece that is in a wooden hoop. I was hoping to get another black frame, but they didn't have that finish available in the styles I wanted, so I decided to buy two to see which looked best, figuring I could save the one I didn't end up using for my Pretty Little Chicago (whenever I finish it). Option 1 Option 2 After taking a quick poll via Instagram stories, I landed on the darker finish, and it looks great - perhaps even better than the original frame job. I will definitely be ordering from Modern Hoopla the next time I need to frame a finish cross stitch piece....

I admit it: I used to think ponchos were stupid, and couldn't envision a single scenario in which I would spend time knitting one, much less wearing it. And I probably would have never changed that opinion if it hadn't been for a request to knit one as a sample for Knit Picks . Believe me when I tell you that the entire time I was working on it, I still had an unfavorable opinion about ponchos. But I said yes because I wanted to make a little extra money to help with the move, and it ended up being the last sample I knit before we left Chicago.  Although this pattern is  officially named  the Aspen Mantle, we all know it's really a poncho!   So when I tried it on to snap a few FO photos before shipping it off to the catalog, something surprising happened: I enjoyed wearing it! It was an epiphany to just toss it on and have it immediately look good - all of the styling issues I have with shawls (which I love to knit) weren't even a thing. Ever so ironically, that...

Ah, the yarn stash. If you've stuck with knitting/yarn craft long enough, you've probably accumulated more yarn than you could ever use in this lifetime. People find out you knit and they gift you random skeins of yarn (or worse yet, random bits of mystery yarn), you buy skeins just because they're pretty, and if you happened to work in the yarn industry for 10+ years (off and on) like I did, there's also a huge amount of freebies and samples in the mix. Long story short, yarn keeps finding a way to sneak into your home and things can get out of hand quickly, even if you've taken great pains to establish some semblance of yarn order.  Before the Big Move last summer, my yarn stash was neatly organized by yarn weight in several large 66-qt. storage bins, and nearly all of it was also photographed and accounted for on my Ravelry account. And then it quickly fell back into chaos as I tried to pare down in preparation for our move to KC.  I donated several boxes of yar...

When I began knitting this scarf last year, I had no idea what story was going to unfold. It started with some skeins of yarn that my then-client sent me for a dyeing tutorial   (UPDATE: since the NKK site is no longer functional, I have republished the dyeing tutorial here ) . Mike had just purchased Nancy's Knit Knacks and Strauch Fiber Equipment, and we had all sorts of exciting things planned for the future, including new products for both brands, revamped online stores & the addition of small-batch yarn to the mix. These skeins were from the first batch of yarn that he'd sourced locally, and after dyeing one of the skeins with some Wool Tinctures from Abundant Earth, I quickly got to work on a simple two-color scarf design which we were planning to offer for free to Mike's newsletter subscribers. Unfortunately, Mike passed away last fall before any of these plans could come to fruition. Throughout the summer, I suspected that there was something serious going on ...