Blocking

I have heard of blocking before, and I sort of new what it was, but I didn't really think I would ever need to do it... until now.

As I said in my previous post, I am planning on creating a border for my patchwork blanket, but because each square uses different yarn, tension, knit styles etc, they didn't line up as equally sized rectangles. I decided I needed to do something about this before I could add to the blanket, so I did a bit of research on blocking and found this really easy to understand article: How to Block Your Knitting



I submerged the whole blanket into a sink of luke-warm water, then laid it out onto a towel and rolled it up to get rid of any excess water, then I began to measure and pin each square to the size I want (18cm x 15cm) onto a dry towel. In some of the squares, such as the intarsia zig zig, there was a lot less give, so it helped to give it a real good stretch with my hands before trying to pin.

Once I had all the squares pinned, I laid another towel on top to help soak up some moisture, then I used my hairdryer on a cool setting. The blanket was almost dry but the towel was really damp, so I then transferred it to a completely dry towel and left it overnight.

It took me quite a while to get the squares all pinned nicely, but I would definitely recommend doing it to get a nicer finish on your work, it has really improved my blanket. I didn't use any fancy equipment, just pins, a tape measure and a couple of towels. From now on I will block each individual square before adding it to the rest of the blanket.