KNITmuch | Issue 07

Steam blocking a shawl knitted with
Chic Sheep goes from good to great!
When I blocked the Simple Lace Triangle Shawl,
it went from this curly crumpled triangularish
shaped garment to a beautiful shawl. One
comment I receive from a lot of people is how
perfect my stitches look on knitted garments.
Blocking goes a long way to making those stitches
look absolutely perfect. They lay flat and fall in line
with their brothers and sisters. It even makes errors
less noticeable.
This is what the eyelets looked like before blocking. You might want to scroll
back to this photo after you see the end result.
Here’s my ‘before’ picture. This shawl was fresh off the needles, cast off and
onto the blocking board.
First thing is first when blocking, you need to decide
how you’re going to do it. There’s wet blocking and
steam blocking. Wet blocking takes a bit longer and
I’d definitely suggest starting out with wet blocking if
you’re not entirely familiar with the process. It’s a bit
more forgiving. It’s easy enough to do, you saturate
your entire garment with water, then gently press
the excess water from it. You then lay it out on a
surface where you can pin it out and leave it to dry.
I know I’m going through this at rapid-fire speed
but it's very easy to find highly detailed instructions
on how to block your knitted garments. I just want
to give you a brief overview and a couple tips and
tricks that will make it easier.
Steam blocking is my favorite way to block and,
I’ve discovered lately, much less common. I steam
blocked the Simple Lace Triangle Shawl made with
Chic Sheep. When I block my garments. I usually
don’t have 12-24 hours to leave something to dry. I
have cats who get into everything and while I might
be able to close off one whole room in my house to
let something settle into its final shape, it’s just not
practical for me to do all the time.
This is the corner of the shawl after unpinning. No curling, no rolling, a perfect
pointed corner. Look at those eyelets! They’re much bigger and more noticeable.
18 KNITmuch | issue 7