Day: December 5, 2020

Comet Quilt VI – The Back

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All those bright blue triangles I had leftover when I remade so many of those HST blocks? I used them to make more HST blocks for the insert on the back of the quilt!

25 of 125 blocks

The quilt top is 54″ x 68″. I need to make the back 4″ larger in both length and width: 58″ x 72″ or thereabouts (I’ll be using the off-cuts to do a hidden binding after the quilt is quilted). My HST blocks finish at 3″ so I needed 25 of them for the length (one extra row just in case), and 5 blocks for the width (15″ to make the back panel wide enough: 42″ + 16 1/2″) will do it.

I needed 125 blocks to construct the insert strip. The strip will be bordered with two dark strips – a finished 1″ strip using the last small scraps I had of the Sparkle fabric (not a single bit left), and one other (finished width 1/2″) yet to be determined!

Back strip under construction

I have assembled two of the 25 blocks elements – 3 to go. I should get those done today. Tomorrow I’ll put the quilt back together, set up the sandwich and then think about what kind of quilting design would complement the Comet Quilt top – no idea about that yet.

Sock Stash

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I got a phone call two days ago – did I happen to have three pairs of socks for sale (one for a man who wears size 9 shoes)? My answer was “Yes” and “No”.

A month ago I went through my stash of socks and put names on all but one pair – my Christmas gifts: one to the woman who cuts my hair, one pair for my massage therapist, one for the gal who does my nails… and a few pair as gifts for friends. So “Yes” I had socks in the stash but they were already allocated. And “No” I didn’t have any to fit a man’s size 9 foot.

So what do you do? These are for sale – same price as last year $50/pair. So I took the undesignated pair, removed the toes, added 10 rows to the foot, then reknit the toes – an evening’s work for each sock. That solved the problem of a pair large enough for a man.

Lengthened socks

I went through the designated socks – decided I probably had enough time to actually knit another one and a half pair of socks between now and Christmas – so she can have two of those; three pair of socks in all.

I’m set to deliver them today. The payment is a “payment forward” – she will send it directly to an endowment fund at our local children’s hospital to support their Child Life program. I’ve been building that endowment for almost 25 years with my annual contributions plus donations like this one. It’s not a huge endowment (although it keeps growing) but it does provide books and supplies for the children who participate in the program while they’re in hospital.

So that’s my good deed for today.