Sunday, March 11, 2012

My First Hexipuff

Well my friends, I have catapulted onto the bandwagon. I received the Beekeeper's Quilt knitting pattern through a generous random act of kindness (RAK.) If you are not familiar with this project, the concept is making tiny stuffed hexagons (hexipuffs) out of scraps of fingering weight yarn. Once you have hundreds of hexipuffs, you sew them together into a quilt. This is a project that I know will take me years, so I am adding a tag so you can follow my progress.


For my first hexipuff, I selected my first handpainted wool skein. Since I love this colorway so much, isn't it fitting for it to take a star role in my quilt? This hexipuff is an exception to my plan because I have a lot of this yarn left. I will try to only make hexipuffs out of remnants (and purchased/donated miniskeins.)



How much do you stuff your hexipuffs? I read that one knitter overstuffed hers so they would hold up for a long time, while other users don't stuff them at all. I decided to go the middle ground and stuff them a little. Sure, they will flatten out over time, but this will provide some added warmth. The amount of stuffing was too small to register on my cooking scale (<1g)


I imagine that this project will cause me to run out of fiberfill. I have been working on this same bag for a few years now!


I cast on using Judy's Magic Cast on and then grafted the top edge together (after stuffing) using the kitchener stitch. This hexipuff used 3 g of wool (+/- 0.5 g). This is ~14 yards.
I knit with size 3 knitting needles LOOSELY. Some of the yarns I will use may be thicker than fingering weight, so I wanted to make sure I can keep everything the same approximate size. Thankfully, I am close to the pattern with 3" from tip to tip. (If my hexipuffs started out too small, then it would take a LOT longer to make a big quilt!)


I have not yet decided how big of a quilt I want. I know that I want the project to be at LEAST the large size, so I will need AT LEAST 384 puffs. I am going to stick to cool colors (blues, greens and purples) but I don't mind hints of warmer color in variegate yarns.

NOTE: I finished more than one hexipuff in my first day, but I wanted the first puff to get a lot of notice!