Blocking June 29, 2006
I’ve finished knitting Helen’s birthday present and have blocked it - actually it’s still pinned out for blocking. This is the first thing I’ve ever seriously blocked. By seriously I mean that I’ve followed the instructions on See Eunny Knit! almost to the letter, because I wanted to do it correctly. I even bought a clear plastic quilter’s rule so that I could make sure the angles were all good.
I never used to block my FOs because I wasn’t exactly sure how it should be done and I figured that I wanted to get a least one use of the item before I risked ruining it in the wash. Seeing how much better the socks I’ve knitted recently looked after being washed & dried carefully changed my mind, though.
Although the term blocking refers to what you do initially with an FO to get the shape right, you kind of do it again every time you wash the item. The instruction that jumpers should be dried flat is really blocking them again after a wash. I washed a commercially made cotton jumper of Mark’s recently and took great care to pull it into the right proportions and lay it out flat for drying and it looks really good. Normally it would have been washed in with everything else and hung on the line like a tshirt. Things take longer to dry lying flat on a towel under a heater vent than if they’re hung on the line (Mark’s jumper took a good 48 hours), but the tradeoff is that they look nicer on and, hopefully, will last longer because they’re being handled with care.
you know, you tempt me to try it.