If you've been in the shop recently, you may have noticed my Akimbo shawl draped over one of the knitting chairs (or around my shoulders if it's cold). The pattern is a fabulous, easier-than-it-looks triangle shawl by Stephen West, one of my favorite knitwear designers.
The pattern calls for a fingering weight yarn but I made mine in a DK weight, to make a bigger, heavier shawl that I can use to generate some real warmth (I'm one of those always-cold people).
I constructed my yarn using silk, wool, cotton, alpaca, and rayon. When I create yarn I'm usually more focused on achieving the color I want than on the fiber content, so my projects can turn into a mish-mash of fibers.
I wanted to share with you the way that blocking really transforms knitting projects. If you've never blocked anything you've knit before, I highly recommend you try it and observe the magic. Blocking basically consists of washing your knitting and then letting it dry in the shape you want it to be in when it's dry.
Washing is important for several reasons. First, humans are kind of greasy creatures and our hands have tons of natural oils on them all the time (not to mention sometimes dirt that we've picked up from our daily activities... touching public surfaces, environmental pollutants, and the hands of strangers that seem to think it's OK to walk up and fondle your WIPs.) Washing your knitting helps take all these nasties out.
Second, when yarn is processed at the factory, spun, and then put up into cones/hanks/skeins/balls, stress is put on the yarn. Then, you take it home and knit with it, pulling it every-which-way with your hands and needles, wrapping and twisting it. Giving the finished object a good soak allows the yarn a chance to relax and this will magically make your stitches look even and plump and happy.
All you need to do to wash your knitting is fill up a sink (if your FO is so big that it can't fit in a sink then you can use a bathtub) with room temp water. Colder water is fine, but hotter than room temp can have some bad effects like shrinking/felting if you're not careful.
Then add a bit of soap. There are some special soaps out there just for washing hand knits, but if you don't want to invest in this, you can simply use some mild dish soap or shampoo (wool is just hair, after all!). Swish the soap around in the water a bit, then plop the knitting in. Let it soak for 20 minutes, then drain the water and squish as much out of the water from the project you can. I wrap the item in a towel, then step all over the towel to really get the water out.
Next, lay the item out on a flat surface in the shape you want it to dry. For certain projects you can just pat it into shape and walk away and wait for it to dry. For other projects you may want to take more extreme measures. That was the case here.
You can see here that the chevron edging doesn't stand out very much and the bottom is all ruffled -- not what I wanted at all. So I got out my pins and stretched the shawl out to the size I wanted, pulled out each of the chevron points, and pinned them down. Then I left it to dry. After the knitting is completely dry, you can unpin it, and it will magically hold the shape you have allowed it to dry in!
Blocking works best with animal fibers it you're trying to do something like open a lace pattern, or keep a scalloped edge crisp. But for general evening-out and plumping-up of stitches I block everything I knit.
We carry the Akimbo pattern here in the shop, and a wide variety of Stephen West's other great patterns for you to try.
