How to: Blocking Knitting.

Blocking Knitting - Why?

Blocking makes your work look professional by evening out the stitches. The process allows you to get a perfect fit if you have knitted up something you want to wear. It's also great where there are lace stitches involved as it gets them to lay open and show off their prettiness clearly. 

It's pretty cool. 

Marmee and I blocked her waistcoat while she was staying with me a couple of weeks ago. 

What we did:

-Put the knitted piece in some lukewarm water (not hot, risk of felting) with some wool detergent.
-Swirled it around a bit (don't agitate, felting alert!).
-Let it sit for 5 minutes or so.
-Drained the water and squeeze the item, rinse well a couple of times with cold water.
-Rolled it up in a big towel (laid out how it will be in the end) and squeezed out the extra water.
-We got another towel and laid out the piece again, getting it all into the final shape we wanted it to be, smoothing out lumpy bits, uneven stitches etc.
-We measured how wide and long we wanted the final version to be and manipulated it into these dimensions and then pinned down the waistcoat.
-Then we left it to dry flat. This took a day or so on the floor by the radiator.

What we learnt:

-On the whole we were really pleased with how this came out. It's a sweet piece. I'll do a tah dah very soon.
-Be careful not to create corners. You see the bottom side ends and how they are pinned? They were pulling a bit too much and now there are funny little corners sitting out when Marmee wears the waistcoat! She'll try and fix that next time she washes the piece.
-Pin the item on the flat surface where you intend to leave it dry, it's hard to move it without stretching it out of shape again.

More on this project:

-Ravelry stuff
-Trying to get gauge.
-Half way!

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