Blocking

At long last I have finally finished my Lace Leaf Shawl!

I have long been an admirer of a certain blogger who makes to most gorgeous shawls, this summer swap shawl is my favourite. Anyway, way way back in March I was thrilled when Mollie announced she would do a KAL for one of her favourite shawl patterns, the camaraderie and guidance would help me through my first shawl challenge.

It started ok but I found I really had to concentrate on the pattern, it is an 8 row repeat and you increase on each row so if you miss calculate you don’t have enough stitches to form the next pattern row. It took me ages to be able to read the pattern to ensure it was going right. But perseverance (and a bit of frogging) paid off in the end!
The pattern is so pretty but just in case you ever think about not blocking take a look at this transformation.

Above you see the finished piece pre blocking, below is a closer shot of the wavy border.

And here is the blocked version.

Isn’t it amazing, thediffernce in the detail.

A close up of the border shows the wavy border at it’s best.

If you fancy making your own pretty shawl you can start by visiting Mollie.

Well if this is a question you have asked yourself before take a look at this.

This is a scarf I started whilst sipping afternoon tea at the Old Deanery in Ripon where we spent a couple of days chilling recently.

I thought this would be a good example to show the difference blocking makes to a project so I have blocked half and left the other half it it’s just finished state so we will be able to make a direct comparison.

I have to admit the pinning part of blocking this took ages and the truth is that I ran out of pins at the halfway mark so had no choice than to do it in two stages. It was having to block all the little picot edging that used so many pins.

You can see the difference already but first I will need to spray it with water and leave it in place to dry so it can take on it’s new shape.

I have tried to take a photo to show how different it looks you can see very clearly from this image how curly the edges are without blocking.

And here a close up.

I loved this pattern, the lacy, delicate pattern looked so intricate but yet was actually quite simple to do. But now it is blocked I think it looks even more lovely.