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Block Party

After finishing my Modular knit blanket last week and realizing that I have a growing pile of unblocked knits… I felt I should do something about it.

So rather than rushing to cast on the next exciting thing, I diligently set about weaving in ALL THE ENDS. For the blanket, this came to over 52 ends – probably closer to 60 since some shapes had more than two ends where I changed colors.

And then I realized that I never actually did weave in the ends on my Clawed shawl. So I did those too. My knitters keep bracelet came in handy as I could stick my yarn needle on it between the many many many ends.

Finally, I was done.

So Sunday morning was a block party. As both are garter stitch without any lace or sizing elements, I wasn’t going to do any serious pinning or shaping. I soaked the Clawed shawl first, with it’s more delicate colors:

Four images of a long crescent shawl in purples, pinks and orange laid out to dry with Sylvia and Pippin, two cats, exploring it.

As you can see, the cats were extremely interested in exploring it. Luckily, they got bored before depositing too much kitty fur on it.

Then I soaked the modular knitting blanket in the same water (I used Eucalan in the water). I was even less worried about shaping for this one, so I just draped it over the ironing board. Since about 1/3 of it was on the board, this meant that the edges weren’t weighed down too much. I just turned it 90 degrees once in a while to help even out the stretch.

A small lap-size blanket using triangles and trapezoids in orange, blue and rainbow yarn laid out to dry. On the left is the same blanket, still drying, with Pippin lying on it.

The cats slept on it too, as expected. They LOVE sleeping on the ironing board when I leave it up. So add a wooly thing on top? Irresistible.

By Sunday night the shawl was dry enough to move it from the bed and hang it on the drying rack, and of course the blanket could be left where it was. I’ve been wearing the shawl this week. I was a bit worried about the extreme pink nature of it as it was laid out to dry. But it has added a nice bit of color on top of a grey top, or blue dress. And wound around my neck, the purple colors and oranges do tone down the pink.

I am also hoping that the appeal of stealing it will have lessened slightly now that all the ends are woven in and trimmed off. More than once as I had it out to finish this week I’d find it in the middle of the floor, victim to Pippin’s fiber fiend ways.