Day: September 10, 2020

I Sold A Pair Of Socks!

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It’s a longish story. A couple of weeks ago my niece (and husband) were having dinner with her brother (and wife) and another couple, friends of my nephew. I don’t recall how the conversation turned to knitting but out came photos of my socks.

Paula fell in love with them and really wanted a pair.

My niece call me to ask how she might go about getting a pair – I said two things: my generic sock (those in my stash) fit someone who wears a size 7 1/2 to 8 shoe; and they cost $50.

Paula’s Socks

My niece paused, said she’d relay the information to Paula.

The next day I get a call from my nephew – Paula is visiting and he wants me to talk to her about socks.

So I tell Paula the same thing – she wears a size 7 1/2 shoe – good. I tell her they’re expensive and I explain why – the yarn costs $25 a ball (before I’ve knit a stitch), it takes me 25 hours to knit a pair, and I won’t work for less than $1/hour. “Fine,” she says; she knits hats and appreciates the effort that goes into the socks.

We look at the socks in my stash (using the camera on my phone) and she chooses a pair she thinks are wonderful.

She sends me a money transfer. In turn I put the pair of socks in the mail. Oh, and I asked her to send me picture of her wearing the socks.

They arrived yesterday. She’s thrilled. This is the picture she sent me.

Good thing I’m not relying on sock sales to keep me going. People find the price prohibitive – don’t know why – were they able to make them themselves the yarn would still cost $25 and it likely would take them a lot longer than 25 hours to knit a pair. I figure it’s a deal.

So I keep knitting and sell the odd pair and give them as gifts on birthdays and at Christmas. What else am I going to do with the 26 pairs of socks I manage to knit in a year?

[I knit only in the evening with the TV on – so although I knit reasonably quickly it takes me about two weeks to turn out a pair of socks. 52 weeks a year divided by 2 weeks is 26 pairs of socks – that’s pretty close to what I actually complete along with some sock repairs I do during the year.]

 

Skyline #1 – Completed

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Here it is. Finished. I just hand-stitched the hidden binding and the label in place.

Skyline #1

I’m quite pleased with how this piece turned out. Final dimensions: 48″ x 64″ – not a bad size for a throw quilt and still reasonable to be hung on a wall should anyone be interested.

I used three different colours of variegated Aurifil (50wt) to quilt the project – on top a darkish purple (with mauve) in the purple corner, a medium turquoise (with light turquoise) in the lighter sections, and a red blend in the peach sections. You really have to look hard to see the differences but it was necessary – a occasional dark purple segment in the turquoise or peach sections would have stuck out; same with a turquoise or red in the dark purple on the bottom right. I used a green variegated thread for the back throughout. That worked well.

I was fortunate, that when I trimmed the backing/batting off, I had enough backing fabric from the four sides that I was able to use the offcuts to bind the quilt. So the hidden binding matches the quilt back!

Skyline #1 – Back

This is the third quilt I’ve used a hidden binding on. I elected to do that here because I felt a regular binding would “frame” the quilt top and I wanted it to be open, without limits. Same with the back, the hidden binding brings the elements to the quilt edge nicely.

Now on to the second in this series.