In 2007, we moved into our current home in the Remington neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland. I moved in with a fair amount of yarn, including a good amount of fingering weight scrap balls.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do with those pretty fingering weight yarn scraps, but I had a hard time with the idea of throwing them away.
In 2011, Stephanie Dosen (aka Tiny Owl Knits) came out with a pattern for a puffy lap quilt called “The Beekeepers Quilt“. This pattern is incredibly popular and people have done all sorts of modifications and variations. The individual components, hexipuffs, are a lot of fun to knit.
In January 2012, I cast on for my first hexipuff (my ravelry project is here). I decided I didn’t like the puffy part, so decided to make hexiflats. I also decided that I wanted this to be a memory quilt so I wouldn’t buy any yarn for it but would use all the fingering weight leftovers from my other projects.
I ended up using almost whole skeins of a couple of yarns because I only needed a small amount for another project, but I ultimately didn’t buy yarn specifically for hexipuffs. I did buy some taupe wool to use to tie all the hexi’s together. From a purely aesthetics perspective, I didn’t want a lot of different color ties.
I knit a lot of hexipuffs. First a dozen, then 50, then a hundred. The project ebbed and flowed, and in February 2017, I made my 500th hexi. I still wanted to try for a queen’s sized blanket, so I continued until January 2018. With over 600 hexi’s, it seemed like it was time to start putting together my quilt.
Putting together the quilt took an incredible number of hours. It was really easy to do and if you’re considering making one of these, I’d recommend watching both the Tiny Owl Knit’s video and some of the other how-to video’s on youtube. Learning other knitters tricks and tips to put it together made it a lot easier to work.
Six and half years, since I cast-on my first hexi, I consider this project complete. As I near the end of my tenure in this little rowhouse in Remington, I have a gorgeous, queen-sized blanket of incredible warmth made of memories. It’s made of sock and hats, of gifts and personal projects. I’m so fortunate to have found this way to put together these scraps of yarn. And I can’t wait until cool weather rolls in, so I can wrap up in these beautiful memories.