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Blocking: Quick and Dirty No-Fail Method

Blocking is one of the things which simply transforms knits.  When people tell me they don’t like the finished result of their work, my first response is always, “Did you block it?”  Simply said, blocking can really, really make your projects shine.

So I’ve got a tutorial for you! Here’s how I block.

You will need:

  • The piece you wish to block
  • some towels
  • some water (cool, but not cold)
  • a place where the piece can dry, undisturbed
  • optional: pins
  • optional: something like Soak or Eculean if you wish for it to smell nice.  Or essential oils work too.
  • optional: things like blocking wires, pins, or in my case, a rubber band.  You’ll see.
  • optional: cats to watch what you’re doing (joking)
First, submerge your pieces in the water until they are completely wet.  Plant-based fibers will suck up the water right away.  Wool based fibers you might have to help a little.  I’m impatient – I squeeze the piece gently to get all the air out, because wool likes to trap air in its fibers.  Keep squeezing until no bubbles come out of your piece.  Or, you can just walk away and come back in an hour.  Both work.

Now, gently squeeze the water out of your piece.  Don’t wring, just squeeze.
The next part’s my favorite part.  Lay the pieces out on a towel.
Then, start jelly-rolling them in the towel.
Keep rolling.
Until it looks like this.
Now, this is the highly technical part.  I tell my students in class this, and they all laugh at me.
In your bare feet (don’t do it in socks – your socks may get wet!), step on the towel.  Stand on it.  Then shift around and do it again.  You want to press ALL THE WATER OUT.
Sometimes, when I’m doing something really big, I need two or three iterations of this step – because the first towel gets SOAKED.  This case, because I was blocking a swatch and a hat, I only needed one.
When you take your pieces out, they should be damp, but not wet.
Now what happens?  Well, you have some choices.
If the piece is something flat like my swatch, all you need to do is lay it out and pat it into shape.  No need to stretch or contort the piece!
For my hat, I needed some assistance.  I needed something larger than a head, because I wanted to block this piece open and stretch things out.  I wanted the final hat to have drape and slouch.  FYI: I did the same thing with my Triple H!
So I found a bowl that stretched the hat out, but left the ribbing at rest (because I didn’t want to block the ribbing out, I still wanted the ribbon stretchy).
Here’s the hat stretched out over the bowl.
Still, the hat kept shifting out of place, so I figured I needed to take one step further.  I pulled the ribbing in, and held it in place with a rubber band.  Perfect!
Then I left it to dry.
For something like the Sylva Shawl, I needed to take a bit more extreme measure.  This shawl needed the lace to open up quite a bit, and I wanted to give the shawl a particular drape and swish.
So I used pins and blocking wires.
Blocking wires are great because you can bend them a little for a curved shawl like this.  See how I threaded the blocking wire through the shawl?  The pins are just holding the blocking wire in place.
This thing was big enough I didn’t have anything big enough to block it on.  So I pinned directly into the mattress.  Shhhh!  Don’t tell Mr. Turtle!
Sylva Shawl, all blocked out.

Sea Cap a Beanie No More

This evening Michael was throwing his clothes from SEA in the wash – as they stunk to high heaven.  One of the things was the SEA watchman’s cap that I knit for him after he went through the program the first time.  As he was getting ready to put stuff in the wash, we had a conversation that went like this:

Me: You know, I think that’s wool.
Him: No, I’m fairly sure it’s acrylic.  You wouldn’t make something for me that was wool after the socks I felted.
Me: *Dubious* Well, okay, if you’re sure.

You know what’s going to happen here, right?  Just in case it isn’t obvious, this was our conversation about an hour later.

Him: Sweetheart, guess what.
Me: *wary* What?
Him: The hat felted.

Turns out that when I said it was Wool, Michael thought I meant it was washable wool, like my socks (which go in the wash, but not the dryer.  We had to have a conversation between super-wash and normal wool.

I don’t think this hat really fits anymore…

Interview with Lee Wittenstein and Walk the Dog

Today we’ve got an interview for you in two
parts to celebrate Lee Wittenstein’s release of a new pattern – Walk the Dog.  One part is here, the other part is at TheYarn Spot’s blog.  I can claim both on
behalf of myself and The Yarn Spot that we’re so proud of Lee, and are looking
forward to seeing more of her patterns published by herself and others in the
future.
A little bit about Lee:  I first met Lee at The Yarn Spot, where I was
working my normal shift.  I had heard
about the talented Lee, but had never met her as our shifts and schedules
rarely overlapped.  She came into the
store that day to pick up some yarn, and I remember her big smile, her cheerful
personality and her incredible knowledge about knitting.  I told her as she was leaving we would have
to get together more often, as it was already clear that I wanted to get to
know her more.  Lee is really a member of
the “fiber tribe” having been taught knitting by her grandmother and being
raised in a “fiber friendly” household. 
Her mother co-runs the popular Yarns International, and Lee has been
working at or with yarn stores since 1987.
So
Lee, tell me a little bit about the Inspiration you had for “Walk the Dog?”
Lee: My friend the dog walker wanted a hat
for her “big head.” She is outside all winter long and needed to be
warm.  She also wanted it to match her coat and be machine washable. 
One of my go-to-yarns for machine-washable is Spud and Chloe Sweater
There was a great match for her coat and so the first version was born. 
Once that was knit I gave it to her, of course, and then set out to make a
second one for my pattern.
What
was the Yarn you used for the second one?
For the second one I wanted something more
luxurious.  Cascade’s Venezia Worsted fit that bill and is available at my
LYS, The Yarn Spot.
What
is your design process like?  Do you
sketch or swatch?
I don’t sketch because I can’t draw.  In
fact, for a long time I thought that I couldn’t be a creative, artistic type if
I couldn’t draw.  Now I know that is so not true but I still can’t
draw.  I always swatch.  To get a feel for the yarn, to decide what
needle size will give the effect I want, to check gauge. That said, I don’t always
fully block the swatch. (Bad designer) I design on the needles so I use my
finished piece to determine final gauge.
What
kind of questions or problems do you try to solve as a designer?
I like that question.  I think my
best designs have come out of trying to fill a need for someone
specific.  Like Walk the Dog.  And a secret design
that will be revealed in a few months. (Did I pique your interest?)
Other design inspirations are visual – a pattern I see on a blanket and want to
try to make work on a hat.  Or a mosaic tile pattern that would
look great on a cowl.  One of the things I love about being a
designer is that everywhere I go there is fodder for my
designing.

I
know I have designers in the industry I look up to – either because of their
business model or because they’re doing something really cool that I wish I had
thought of.  Who are your favorite
designers right now – the people you would like to emulate?
There are a lot of people doing really
interesting things. It is hard to mention only a few.  But I
will.  I admire people who think outside the box–Norah Gaughan springs to
mind.  Ann Weaver‘s use of color and her sources of inspiration are
amazing.  Kate Davies is an inspiring designer who has a modern take on
traditional knitting. 
How
do you envision your business in the next five years?
I hope I am still here, still doing designs
that I love and that lots of other people love too.  I don’t have a formal
five-year plan or anything like that.  The designing business has come out
of my real love for knitting, yarn and the knitting world.  I hope to
still be a productive, creative part of it all in five years (or more!)
What
are some of the projects we can look forward to from you in the future?
I have three projects that are just a wee bit
away from being ready to publish.  One is a cowl with easy lace and fun
colors.  Another is a mitered squares cowl which would be a good first
pattern for this technique.  I’m working up a class with that one. 
Finally, a scarf-ette in lace and garter stitch which would be a great holiday
gift.  Other things I am playing with are a cabled hat, traveling stitches
mitts and a child’s cardigan.
Lee, thank you very much
for taking the time to answer my questions. 
Check out the rest of the interview over at The Yarn Spot, Lee’s website
at http://harperandfigg.com/, and her pattern
at http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/walk-the-dog.

Please. Don’t say you’re making a scarf.

Many people come into the yarn store where I work, and will say it’s their first time knitting or crocheting and they want to make a scarf.  I always try to steer them away from this.

Why?

Because a scarf takes a long time.  And especially if you are doing a garter stitch scarf or a scarf in single crochet, after the first 8-10″, you’ve got knitting/single crochet down.  Now you are going to be working that same stitch for at least another 50″.  Chances are you want to move beyond that one stitch.  Maybe learn to purl, double crochet, increase or decrease.  You start loosing interest.  And there, that scarf languishes.  You might even give up knitting or crochet altogether.

Please don’t do this to yourself.  It would be like a person who went into a weight loss program saying they needed to loose 100 lbs.  Well, you might want to loose 100 lbs, but chances are you are going to focus on more attainable, small term goals.  Perhaps just the first 5 lbs.

In a similar way, give yourself a more attainable goal.  Perhaps you’d like to make a pair of finger-less mitts.  Or a cowl.  Here’s a list of a few different projects you can do easily, as a beginner, and still get satisfaction from completing a project.

A shopping bag made out of squares.

A Pair of slippers. – they fold up really easily, and then you just whip stitch them up the sides.

Another pair of slippers.

A knitted bunny pattern – made of squares.

A garter stitch kitty made out of squares.

A teddy bear made of squares.

A small crochet clutch

Crochet slippers

Crochet Hat

Fingerless Mitts

Good luck learning, and may you set some accomplish-able goals!

I really like Trisha’s Hats

Every once and a while, I come across something really cool, and I feel the need to share it.  About a week and a half ago, though Jennifer, of the Magpie Knitter, I met Trisha Paetsch.  She was looking for someone to review her pattern.  As someone who always loves to see what other designers are doing I was interested in taking a look at the pattern.  And then, I found out that the pattern was about hats.

Seriously.  I love hats.  (Michael, my fiance, and I have a huge collection of hats.  Standard rule in our household… you play a boardgame, you wear a hat.  We can have more than 25 people over to play games with us, and not run out of hats.  We love hats.)

So I was a little biased going into the pattern, because I really love hats.  But I will also say that because I love hats, I’m rather picky about my hats.  I want them to have nice shaping.  I want them to be finished well.  I want them to be stylish and functional.  I became a little worried after I got the pattern from Trisha.  What if her patterns didn’t match up with my expectations?

Let me break the suspense here, Trisha delivers a solid set of hat patterns in Grande Prairie Hats.  The pattern is constructed as a narrative of several lovely ladies going out and getting photographed in their hats.  And what hats they have!  There’s a little something for everyone.  Now, while I will admit, not all the hats are to my taste.  I’m not too fond of the wide headbands that are featured (Bregdan and Leanne).  They’re lovely, the color choice is great, and they’re definitely something say, my sister or mother would wear, but I like something that covers my head.  However, the details and the color choices and both are lovely.

And that’s fine, because she also has some lovely traditional(ish) style hats, like Frippery or Frivolity.  Much more my type of thing.  Trisha also includes a few types of beanies to round the number of patterns out.  There’s also a really cute, solid mitten pattern that you get in the ebook.

The only drawback is the document is rather large if you want to print it off in it’s entirety.  It’s 35 pages, and parts of it are rather picture heavy.  That isn’t necessarily a drawback because I can select which pages I want to print out, but as someone who (aims, but admittedly doesn’t always achieve to have) prefers a a few carefully chosen pictures instead of a bunch, it wasn’t necessarily my thing.  But if you are the type of person who likes to see a project you are doing from every single angle, Tracy definitely delivers.

One of the parts I like the most about the ebook is actually all the finishing details Tracy includes.  Part of the reason I like her hats so much (especially Frippery and Frivolity) is because of the details used to finish the hats with feathers and other little bits and bobs.  Tracy walks you through finishing your own hat, and the details and decisions you make in regards to that.

Overall, I would say Tracy’s Grande Prairie Hats is a very solid new release, and I would encourage you to go purchase the book, or the individual patterns.  I think you’ll get your money’s worth.