Who Says I'm Not Knitting?

In a great spurt of creative energy after I finished France Socks, and after a prod by my knitting and travel buddy, off I went to Ravelry to find out about "The Beekeeper's Quilt." I was fascinated!

Back in my old days of going to The Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival I amassed quite a collection of Koigu sock yarn. This was back in the day when Koigu had a booth selling . . . I forget their name for it . .  . end of dyelot, end of run, end of the road, mill ends? Well, you get the idea. They were less than full skeins and were sold at 10 cents per gram. Rule of thumb: 100 grams needed to knit a pair of socks. Can you believe it? A pair of Koigu socks for $10!!! You could spend hours searching through overflowing baskets of multi-sized skeins tagged with color and dyelot numbers and find enough of one color to make a pair of socks, sometimes enough of one color to make a sweater. Of course the shading might be a little off if your color choice consisted of different dyelots. Some of the shading was not discernible and certainly wouldn't matter in a pair of socks. But a sweater? I wouldn't venture that far unless I was going for a Joseph's-Coat-inspired sweater and picked many different colors. Dyelot would not come into play. But I digress.

I would return to my motel room after a long day of fiber overload and band my little skeins into 100 gram bundles visualizing how the socks would be knit, darkest shaded dyelot to start and working down to lightest at toe, or vice-versa. The socks would have to be knit two at a time so that the shadings matched. I'm very anal about matching handknit socks.

So back to The Beekeeper's Quilt: I went to Ravelry for the pattern, researched the history and nuances, (I'm also anal about researching patterns and yarn.) and made the commitment to start knitting "hexapuffs," the little hexacombs the quilt is made up of. In the end I wasn't sure I wanted to dismantle all my Koigu 100 gram bundles, although they had been laying fallow for years in a decorative basket as part of my "comfort of yarn" collection. I found an online vendor who was selling "skeinettes" of Koigu supposedly big enough to knit one hexapuff. I'm not referencing that vendor because my $25 Grab Bag order of what was pictured as being many blue hued skeinettes contained mostly non blue and each was too short on yardage to make a whole hexapuff, even though they were supposed to have been made just for that purpose. Grrrrrr!

a skeinette that ran out before hexacomb was finished
 

Using the closest match to finish didn't appeal to me.

 

 

 

 

    So I started using my comfort of Koigu.

The Beekeeper's Quilt continues on at a snails pace. I complete a puff a night when I'm on course. But here's the thing, during the process I learned a neat cast on and found a great video to help me get the hang of it. (I'm left handed living a right handed life. Some things are awkward for me.)

Once I had that cast on down pat I decided my Beach Socks 2012 (being knitted in 2013, far from the beach and in the winter) would be toe up, two on one long circular. I never like doing two at once on one needle but thought the challenge would be good for me. Go figure.

There is a ridge. It works for hexapuffs but for toe up socks you might prefer Judy's Magic Cast On.

Anyway, who says I'm not knitting?!!!


Bona Fide Knitter