So as most people who know me are already aware, I love to knit lace. I think one of the main reasons is because what you have in your hands as you are knitting, looks very different when it’s been washed and blocked. So you get the pleasure at multiple points.
I thought I would show both Knitters and those aspiring to knit, the process that I go through, the tools that I use and what the finished result looks like. Above is an example of a shawl as it looks when it comes off my Needles. I will now soak this in hand-hot water, with a little wool safe soap and just let it rest for about 20 minutes. Then I will gently wring out most of the water and wrap it in a towel to get out the excess moisture. The next step is quite time-consuming. First, you need to decide what the intended final shape is. For this one it was a plain rectangle but some are curved, some have points etc. Over time I have collected a number of things to get this done.
I use spongy floor tiles from somewhere like Home Depot. In the above image here are some of the things I have collected. On the right there are straight wires, great for long straight edges, I thread them through the edge them hold them in place with the U shaped pins in the middle of the circle. The circle is a covered flexible wire, perfect for curved edges. You do the same thing, thread it through the edge the use the U pins to hold the shape. The U pins and the T pins are used to pin out small points etc. Top left is some smaller straight edge pins (got those from knit picks). For this shawl I threaded wires through the top and bottom edges and then used the straight blocking pins for pegging out the sides.
Just leave it to dry and when fully dry, take the pins out and voila! it looks so different😀
