There’s a bit of a preamble to this tutorial, if you’re just looking for the meat I suggest you scroll down a bit. If you’re out to become more generally knowledgeable about knitting, then read on.
Here are some of the things I frequently see people recommending when they block things (in tutorials and also quite a lot on forums). These aren’t things that I disagree with, per se, but I do have some contrary opinions about them.
I have NEVER accidentally felted a knitted item without armpits or a washing machine being involved. I have intentionally hand felted things, and I will tell you: it is a lot of work. It is not something that happens because you gave your knitting one too many squeezes in water that wasn’t the perfect temperature.
Like I have the patience for that! Ever! Nope. I get that some people are treating blocking as also cleaning your knits time, and in that sense, I guess this tip makes some sense… If you have particularly sweaty hands when you knit or if you dropped it in mud mid-stitch, perhaps… Otherwise, I find it to be totally unnecessary to soak it for more than a few seconds (giving it some underwater squeezes to get all the air bubbles out and let the water soak in as one would a sponge.)
This one I do actually agree with, you shouldn’t wring your knitting out, true, but I just feel like it instills a sense of panic in people who might be new to this. Don’t twist your knitting into a knot as you would an old wash rag, sure, but don’t be afraid to handle it when it’s wet. It’s okay to give it some good squeezes to get the excess water out, you’re not going to kill it.
There is only one scenario in which millions of pins are necessary and that scenario is lace shawls. Lace knitting is something that requires quite a bit of extra care when blocking because you have to open up all those holes and that means a lot of stretching, which means more attention to the edges of your work and keeping them straight. You may also need to do some more pinning any time you’re trying to stretch your knitting out a little bit to a bigger size.
The vast majority of other knitting projects, you really don’t necessarily need that many pins. Heck, you may not even need to pin it at all. If your knitting is pretty close to the measurements it’s supposed to be before you get it wet, you can most likely get away with just getting it wet, giving it a few tugs to make sure there are not wonky stitches, and then just laying it flat to dry—no pins necessary. This is what I do about 90% of the time. If I’m blocking pieces, as opposed to a finished object, then I do use pins but I don’t go crazy with them. A few in the corners and along the way to keep things unrolled does the job.
Okay, so I get that the impetus behind these tips is that no one wants to ruin their hard work. I get that. My counter argument to that is this: It’s a lot harder to screw up your knitting than you think it is. Blocking does not need to be this scary, delicate process. If your knitting is dry andsomehow something got deformed along the way,guess what: you can get it wet again and reblock it. I promise you you can. Especially if you’re knitting with wool. (And if you’re knitting with synthetic fibers, there is little you can do short of melting your knitting to ruin it.) There are a few exceptions to this—some fibers, like alpaca, have a tendency to stretch out when wet and have a harder time recovering. Luxury yarns definitely require some extra care. But unless you aretaking your knitting out back and beating it with a stick, as long as you practice some common senseyou are_not_ going to fubar your knitting. Now, before I get to the tutorial I will slap down one more strong opinion on you about blocking. If you happened upon this tutorial because you are a new knitter and you are wondering:
My answer—provided you worked with plant or animal fibers—is a resounding YES YOU DO. Why? Because it will look much, much better when you do. You will not regret taking the extra day to block your work. You may regret wearing your lumpy sweater, or handing over the lumpy arm warmers you made your friend. I don’t know how much you care about that kind of thing. But I know that any time I get that, “Eh… Do I reeeaaallly need to do this?” and then I do it, I slap my past self for even thinking for a second I could get away with not blocking something.
Why does blocking work so much magic? It doesn’t matter how good of a knitter you are or how consistent your stitch tension is, by the time you knit a given skein of yarn it’s already been through a lot: it’s been sheared, washed, dyed, spun, wound into a ball, and then manipulated into thousands of little loops. When you get it wet, it sort of resets, and then when it dries, it relaxes into the proper shape.Think of wool like hair: If you have naturally straight hair that you want to make curlyone way to do it is to get it wet, put it in curlers, and let it dry. This is what is happening when you are blocking wool: when the wool dries into its new shape, it’s happy to stay in that shape. You’re never going to get dry, straight hair to be curly if you’re not applying wetness or heat to it, and you’re never going to get knitting to be smooth and lumpless unless you block it.
With that said, you can sometimes get away without blocking synthetic fibers, because they are just different and crazy. If you wash your acrylic sweater, it will still help it out, but the blocking process outlined below pretty much won’t do anything for you.
Okay, Stephanie, enough ranting about blocking. ONTO THE TUTORIAL!
(PS: Also works for crochet)
You can squish it around in there to speed up the process. Get all the air bubbles out. It’ll get good and wet that way.
Yes, stand on it.
Just tug it a little in every direction to even out the stitches.
#Step Five: Lay it flat, pin out important measurements (if you want)
Make sure things you don’t want too rolly-uppy are pinned flat, and that everything is the right size. This is when you can manipulate your knitting quite a bit, you can stretch and pin the whole thing out to a size or so bigger if you need to, if you need it longer stretch it more width wise or if you need it wider stretch it more length wise. Play with it, it’s like your knitting play dough.
That’s it. Let it dry. Take the pins out, if you used any. Done.