Blocking

Have you ever blocked? It always struck me as something that proper crocheters and knitters do. Let me enlighten you, it is a way of ‘fixing’ your work so that it doesn’t curl at the edges and also a way of stabilising your project so that it remains straight. You can view a very much better explanation and how to video here. I used the process on a blanket I made that I wanted to make a little wider. Do you remember the wool buffer I always allow that I talked about in my Crochet maths! blog post, well I used my remaining wool to add thin rows of double crochet (US single crochet) in each of the blanket colours to one side. This looked lovely and it was just the something extra that I  wanted to achieve, however, it kept curling up on the corners – mainly because double crochet rows are naturally quite tight and I found it really annoying, but I didn’t have enough wool left over to add the stripes in a fancy stitch. Blocking was the answer. I pinned the blanket edge to my ironing mat and using my steam iron very carefully streamed the work from about 6cm away, do not touch the iron to your wool! Leave it to cool and BOOM – flat non-curling edges. I now know I can use this process on the front edge of a cardigan that I started making 3 years ago and never finished, but I’m sure I’ll write more about unfinished projects at another time.