#dawnasks

[avis-of-dawn]

Hello? Anyone there? - @the-amazing-sun

hmm?

Oh, HIIIII!!!

sounds like child

[dawnthread]

Hi!! I’m just getting into knitting things like garments (I’ve only really done little things like scarves or hats or toys) so I don’t really understand what blocking is? Or why to do it?

oh, yeah, okay!!

first of all, congratulations on getting into knitting, i hope you're having a ton of fun with it!

second of all, my local yarn shop has a whole article about blocking basics, which is super helpful, but i'll give you my spin on it too

so there's a couple different methods of blocking, but the one i use the most is called "wet blocking," which is where you soak your thing in lukewarm water (with a bit of no-rinse-needed wool wash like Eucalan or Soak, if you have any!) for a while, squeeze it out gently until it's still heavily damp but not dripping, and lay it on a mat to stretch it out and pin it in place to dry like that. this is the method that gives you the most dramatic change in both shape and fabric density, because soaking the knit relaxes the fibers in the yarn and lets you really haul away at it to open up the design, and that's important for lace knitting because basically all lace just looks like a sad yarn lump when it's fresh off the needles. when you block it, though...

this was a past project i finished - see how much nicer that looks?

for lace (and cabling, to a different extent), the way your fabric tensions itself as you do all the texture work makes it scrunch up weirdly, and blocking it is how you get it to smooth itself out and look pretty. for lace, it means you can also get some dramatic shaping going on at the edges that you wouldn't have been able to see otherwise, like those pointy curves in the one up above, or the little bats in this other one!

it's also important for doing fitted garments like sweaters, because it gives you more control over how big the fabric you're making is actually, ultimately going to be.

it's a great safety check against a sweater getting awkwardly stretched out in the wash, because if you knit a test swatch and block it, you get a preview of how the fabric is going to behave later, and use that to inform your sizing choices now. it can also give you some wiggle room on a pattern gauge that you can't quite match with the yarn/needles you're using! if you're trying to do a sweater and your gauge is just a little bit smaller than what they say will give you your pattern size, try blocking a swatch and seeing what it looks like when you stretch it to match the pattern gauge.

if you're doing anything with seams, i would also strongly recommend blocking the pieces before you seam them together! it makes it a hell of a lot easier to get at the selvedge stitch when you start sewing, and it also lets you ensure that all your pieces are the exact size you want them to be before you put them all together. especially if you're knitting with wool (and i think other animal fibers like alpaca?) and you use steam blocking, like they said in the article - that will physically change the shape of the fibers and lock your piece in place at the exact size you want it to be.

i would also recommend getting some blocking mats to do it on? you can just pin it to a towel, it's what i used to do, but believe me, it's SO much easier with a set of blocking mats. you can see how they have those gridlines marked on them, right? that helps you keep track of how your work is lining up with itself, and whether one side is proportionally the same as the other side! it's not crucial, but it's definitely a quality-of-life upgrade.

i have three sets of the hephaestus crafts ones, they come with a box of pins, a tape measure, and nine interlocking foam squares with a 1" grid printed on them that you can set up however you want. they cost about $30, and i've been pretty happy with them, even if one of them did come with the gridlines printed on the wrong side ;P

anyway, i hope this answered your question!! tl;dr,

[avis-of-dawn]

*headpats*

[dawnthread]

hey I did a quick peek and couldn't find the pattern for the shawl on rav!

how did you get ahold of the charts etc I'd love to join in on the kal!

yeah, the designer has unfortunately stopped selling her patterns - i ended up messaging a couple people in the ravelry projects tab to see if any of them would be willing to share their copy with me, and one of them graciously obliged!!

i uploaded it to google drive here, have fun~

edit: OH ALSO I ALMOST FORGOT, there's a chart error!

the one i circled down at the bottom there in the center panel chart i'm pretty sure is supposed to be a left-leaning decrease, not a right-leaning one, the whole rest of the chart is perfectly symmetrical so that's probably not on purpose XD

[avis-of-dawn]

*… a little present! With a note!*

“happy bird-day kiddo!”

— Carbine

*….. it’s a little package of those frosted sugar cookies!!!! With the icing!!!!*

— @master-dealmaker

gasp

cookies!!!

[avis-of-dawn]

headpats for the birbday bird

yay thank you!!

[avis-of-dawn]

*hands the child pipebomb*

go. Commit a felony.

OKAY!!

[avis-of-dawn]

Fynn sleeps in for a really long time…doesn’t mean he didn’t get her something, though.

whoops probably should have answered this 8 days ago

i had nothing to say at the time since joy was running around crazy so uh yeah she was doing that at the time.