I am keeping notes on the things you've asked me to blog about this month, and starting with an easy question: Giddy asked me to explain blocking.
When a knitter finishes a project, she will usually block it.This just means giving it a good soak in cool or lukewarm water, and then letting it dry. The details vary with the type of project.
If you are knitting with two colors, they will often look a little lumpy or puckery or uneven during the knitting. I took an in-progress picture of this cowl in February 2020*, and even though I'm very comfortable with stranded knitting you'll notice that it doesn't look its best in this first picture.
Once I bound it off (which required me to figure out that the pattern booklet was upside down in that picture, SIGH), I gave it a bath. A useful tip: when your FO (finished object) sinks to the bottom of the water, you can be confident that the fibers are saturated. Wool naturally repels water, so don't rush it. Once it's well and truly soaked, squeeze it gently and then bundle it up in a towel that can absorb most of the remaining water.
If you're blocking colorwork, find a quiet place for it to dry flat. Just smooth it out gently and leave it alone for a while. Above is an "after" picture for that cowl. To my eye it looks much smoother and neater.
Blocking is especially important for lace, which always looks like a crumply pile of nothing when you are knitting it. When you block lace, you pin it out while it's wet and leave it to dry. This will usually give you a substantially larger FO. Here's an in-progress photo from my last lace project.
Down below is the blocking photo. It grew at least 25% longer and has retained the length. You might be able to see my blocking wires in the picture -- those allow me to shape an edge or a curve with fewer pins. I did not intend to knit an 8-foot scarf, but -- whoops! -- that's what I did.
Blocking will open out the lace and allow any decorative edgings to look their best.
Does anyone remember the totally bonkers turtle sweater that was two years in the making? It got a very aggressive blocking. If I'm going to knit bell sleeves with scalloped edges, then by golly I want bell sleeves with scalloped edges. The sleeves initially looked like little tiny sleevelets, suitable for Smurfs or house elves but not for a grownup human.
Here you can see the aggressive blocking in progress:
The finished project looks like this. Note that I do not have little tiny Smurf arms, and yet the sleeves fit me just fine. This is the magic of blocking alpaca. If you don't know about this feature of alpaca yarn up front, it may feel less magical and more diabolical.
Giddy asked if crocheted projects required blocking and I'm not sure. Crochet is much less elastic than knitting, and so I would expect blocking to have a much smaller effect. I have only a rudimentary knowledge of crochet, though, so I could be wrong about that. Yarn choices also have an effect on blocking. Animal fibers pretty much always benefit from blocking, but I have heard that it doesn't do much for acrylic yarn.
*Do you find yourself looking back on Jan/Feb 2020 as if you were watching a horror movie, shouting at the screen, "Run away! He's hiding under the bed! Run away!" I don't know where I could have run to avoid COVID, exactly, but I look back at that particular picture and think, Hoo boy, self, you had NO idea what was heading your way.
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