Hi All,
How do you know when to block a sweater? Is it the yarn or the pattern or both? Is it the type of yarn that needs to be blocked…if so which yarn types need to be blocked and why?
I am not working on anything that I need to block …just one of my many questions. :knitting:
Acrylic yarns don’t block well, though they can be steamed to hold their shape. And it depends on what you call blocking - if you knit the sweater to the right size, there’s not much need to stretch it, just wash and let dry and the stitches even out. Only lace might needl to actually be stretched/blocked hard, but I get around that by using much larger needles so the sts and pattern are knit ‘stretched out’.
If you steam acrylic though be very careful. You can do what is called killing it and that’s permanent. I usually just toss acrylic in the washer and dryer or washer and lay flat/drip dry.
is it allowed to admit that I have never blocked a single thing in my life?
well, in my sock and glove phase I obviosly did not need it.
now that I am knitting shirts and sweaters, I really should. But I just don’t.
I will start it, though. I really will. Thanks for all your advice spread out here.
I’ve only lightly blocked stuff, a scarf in etrelac where blocking flattened out the bumps. But mostly I don’t, even wool shawls. I just wash and lay out flat to dry without pinning.
Sue, in my mind the way you treat your wool shawls[I] is [/I]blocking. Maybe not the pinning, measuring, stressing kind, but it works and improves the look of the item. = Blocking. (Oh, by stress, I meant emotional stress. lol)
Right, even just washing makes them look better, though some people insist you have to pin items to their ‘correct size’ and that is what blocking is. I just knit them to the right size. I knit at a larger gauge too and so for lace shawls I don’t block severely, the looser gauge accomplishes the same thing as ‘blocking severely’ that is recommended for lace patterns. I use a lot of acrylic and don’t want to ‘kill’ it, so using the bigger needles works well.
Woohoo…This is great to know…wonderful I will not have to worry about blocking. Just wash, shape and dry flat! Works for me.
Many thanks to all of you. :knitting: