The Beekeepers Quilt...

...also known as the never, ever, ever ending project, IS FINALLY FINISHED (after a whopping 2 years and 10 months).

It comes in at 361 hexipuffs (or the equivalent of the toes part of 361 toe up socks and 361 top down socks), with 1.4 bags of polyfill and 300gm of wool stuffing to puff them out with. Lovely Josie helped me take some photos of it in the park near my house, and these are pretty much the first daylight/no filter photos of the blanket in existence.

When this pattern first came out, I just knew I had to knit it because it reminded me so much of my favourite picture book from when I was small. I was lucky enough to have a Mum who put this book aside and recently sent it back to me just in time for this photo shoot. My memory of the book had the quilt as hexagons and not squares, so this isn't a "perfect match", but I still think my quilt does the book justice!

I used every kind of 4 ply/sock yarn/5 ply that I could lay my hands on, from Madtosh to Patonyle to Araucania to Skein. It's the squishiest and most mis-matchiest blanket I've ever made, and while I don't *quite* love it yet, I'm sure I soon will.

I decided to seam all the edges, it's quite heavy as I don't feel that the corner ties are sufficient to support the weight without seriously compromising the likelihood that this quilt would survive years of use (abuse!) on laps in my house.

I had originally planned for a Queen size blanket, but to be honest, I ran out of steam. The finished measurements are 1m x 1.2m so it's a good lap blanket size. Nice and heavy.

I think as I build 4ply leftovers up again over the next few years I can knock out sets of 19 puffs and add rows on either end to make it bigger, but if I don't, I'm still happy with the finished piece.

A big thank you to everyone who donated their 4 ply leftovers to me; Ursula, Sharon, Jules, Melanie and the rest of the wonderful Richmond Knitters I couldn't have done it without you!