Blocking Part 1

My first big adventure in knitting was taking on a sweater for my daughter. Finally something that is not square or rectangular! With this new project I'm learning a lot about natural fibers (totally in love but that's another post) and how to knit with them. Now that I've got the pieces knitted up I find out that I have to block them and realize that I have no idea how to go about this. Thank goodness for the Internet! I found this wonderful tutorial on Knitty on how to block garments. It talks mainly about wool but does give some advice on other fibers as well and sends you in the right direction if you really want to become an expert on the subject.



So back to the sweater; after many weeks of calling my sister-in-law and bugging her about what a certain step in the pattern really wanted me to do I have four pieces for my daughters sweater. Now comes the easy part (well maybe) of blocking and seaming. The sweater is made of 100% Alpaca and the article in Knitty suggests dry pinning and then spritzing before reshaping. Like a rebel though I decided to go the wet blocking method, please don't call the knitting police on me. I decided on the wet blocking for two reasons, 1) I live with a toddler and I'm pretty sure something was spilled on a few of the pieces during the last several weeks; they needed washing, 2) I'm a fairly tight knitter and realized that the pieces might be on the smallish side so I wasn't worried about stretching.



After washing the pieces by hand in cool water and baby shampoo, I rinsed them and patted most of the moisture out with a bath towel. I took the damp towels and laid them out on the end of my bed and proceeded to pin the pieces out flat.

Another option, besides using your bed our couch, would be to make a blocking board. These would be convenient in many ways, most of which they're somewhat portable and you can move them around. Right now I'm praying these will be dry by the time I decide to go to be tonight, I'm not sure what I'll do if they don't. So now we wait.............

The adventure begins!

Technically my adventures in knitting, crocheting, and yarn craft in general begin a long time ago, the real adventure is sharing these stories with all of you. My first attempt at learning to knit happened around 10 years old; my Mom taught me to cast on but my young attention span didn't really last past that one lesson. Fast-forward about 15 years, I'm in college and very board one night so I make the trek to the 24 hour WalMart and bout "I Taught Myself Knitting" form Boye.

All in all this was a good tutorial; it came with all the supplies I would need to really get into knitting, it taught all the basics of knitting, purling, increasing, ect. with directions and illustrations for both lefties and righties, and even included a few patterns to practice your new skills on. I did not become a master knitter after reading this book, the main problem was trying to teach myself to knit left-handed while the rest of the knitting world seems to be right-handed (more on that later). No matter how I tried all I seemed able to produce was a purl stitch, needless to say the advanced knitting concepts of increases, decreases, cables, and all those other embellishments that make projects exciting we soon lost on me. I proceeded to "knit" many project in various square and rectangular shapes in garter stitch. The family members I gifted these early attempts on were obviously thrilled.

Fast-forward a few more years and about a million scarves later; my then future Sister-in-Law (who successfully taught herself to knit) informs me of what I'm doing wrong and attempts to teach me the correct way to achieve a knit stitch. I say "attempts" because she of course knits right-handed and silly me decided to go lefty on this adventure. After many lessons, quires, and practice she finally succeeds in teaching me a correct knit and purl stitch, though I'm painfully slow in my attempts. It is at this point that I grow somewhat board of my squares and rectangles, even though I've finally mastered a decent stockinette stitch, and head off to the trusty craft section of my local WalMart to purchase the sister to my first tutorial; "I Taught Myself Crochet" from Boye.

This tutorial, like its knitting companion, comes with everything you need to teach yourself to crochet. This time around I was much more successful with my attempts at learning to crochet, though I still seem to be stuck on square and rectangular objects. This started a three year crochet rut and my poor knitting needles languished in my knitting basket.

In September of 2008 I finally found some balance in my yarn crafting. I stumbled on a wonderful web site, knittinghelp.com that was finally able to show me some of the more complex techniques like cables, every increase and decrease under the sun, and all the forms of circular knitting. After viewing the videos on this site I gained a new-found joy of knitting AND crochet which led me to search out more online knitting help.

This brings you up to date; from here on out my posts will be about new projects I'm challenging myself with, helpful blogs or podcast I've come across, and my favorite knitting related websites I find.

Happy Knitting!