Hexipuffing away...

 Almost exactly a year ago, I caught the beekeeper quilt bug. Since then I've been turning out hexipuffs; sometimes just the odd one to use up a scrap of left-over sock yarn or 4 ply, at other times, churning out 5 or 6 every evening for a week or more as I find myself between larger projects.

Right from the start, I had a clear vision of what I wanted to achieve: a spectrum of colour from one side to the other. I wanted strong shades of colour, nothing too pastel, and I didn't want anything that was strongly variegated or striped. Unlike the other sock yarn blanket I have on the go (4 inch squares knitted on the bias) which is exclusively for the purpose of using up leftovers, I decided that buying yarn for this project was not only acceptable, but was going to be necessary to ensure a good colour balance.

I started off using up yarn in my stash that fitted the critera and wasn't earmarked for other purposes. I used the remains of a cone of plum-coloured merino 4 ply that I'd had from my very earliest knitting days, the ball-ends of many shades of 4 ply alpaca that had been used for mittens, baby gifts and colourwork, the ball-ends of sock yarn that had been used for socks, scarfs and shawls and some very light DK that was left over from a hat. I even navajo-chained some left over laceweight and knitted hexipuffs from that.

Having exhausted my supply of left-overs (though from time to time, more always present themselves), I moved on to small quantitied of merino and merino-silk roving in my spinning stash. I spun these finely and plied to approximately 4 ply weight and used these for more hexipuffs.

Finally I bought some yarn specifically. A few weeks ago, I found some lovely mixed mini-skein sock yarn packs from Rosie Retro and knitted them up into hexipuffs,

and I've just bought some small skeins of the Yarn Yard Bonny that will balance some gaps in my spectrum.

Every so often, I lay the accumulated hexipuffs out (I now have about 170) and take a photo. This is really helpful in identifying where the 'thin' parts of the spectrum are.

I'm about a quarter of the way to where I'd like to finish hexipuffing so this project may take a few more years yet and it may be some time until you see it again!