My First Post!

Hi Everyone!

My name is Stephanie and I’m the lady behind By Stephanie Erin. I am slightly, ok you got me, completely obsessed with all things fiber.

I started crocheting in the fall of 2015. I have always had a creative outlet in my life and around that time I was struggling with wanting something more to challenge me. Prior to this I ran a nail art blog and that was my outlet, however it was becoming exhausting painting my nails for hours a day only to wipe them off with only a photo to share. I knew that I needed something that produced a finished product. Insert Crochet. My mom is a very experienced knitter and I wanted to do something that we would be able to share, but a hook appealed to me more than needles at the time. My very first project was a little amigurimi elephant! I actually remember making him and not knowing how to fasten off, so I just cut my yarn and thought it would be fine! Somehow he’s still together today. He never got eyes, but I learned a lot and that only prompted me to dive in and start creating accessories and garments. I created some of my own patterns off the hop, but never took a note so I have no idea how to ever duplicate them. I was creating things fast and furious and tried my hand at setting up an Etsy shop, but I had no idea what I was doing and quickly left that behind when I became too overwhelmed.

For awhile I stuck to making gifts at Christmas and left my hooks alone periodically because I would think I wasn’t good enough. I’m not sure where this came from, but a few months ago it hit me, that I was the only one that thought this. This realization was really freeing and I started really making again. Suddenly I was scribbling designs in notebooks everywhere and taking my hook and yarn everywhere I went.

I then decided to start a crochet themed Instagram account, @by.stephanie.erin so that I wasn’t spamming all my family and friends with fiber posts every other day. The amazing community of makers online gave me the confidence to take all those scribbles and start turning them into written designs.

I finally took the leap and decided to start this blog so that I will be able to share some of those patterns for free and some of my adventures in fiber along the way.

Why By Stephanie Erin? Well, as I mentioned I’ve had a few different creative outlets over the years and I wanted to come up with a name that would allow me to grow and continue to pursue other creative avenues if I ever chose to. For now this blog is all about crochet, but who knows where it’ll end up!

In addition to having way too big a yarn stash, I love to run and kickbox, I try to read 100 books every year (and yes audiobooks while making count!). I’ve never met a dog I didn’t immediately fall in love with and one of my childhood nicknames was Smiley because I try to always see the positive and have a smile on my face.

If you’ve made it this far THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE! I really and truly do appreciate every person who ever visits this site. I hope you enjoy what you find here and it can help you along your own making journey.

xoxo

Stephanie