Six months ago I finished my Color Affection. In laceweight. It’s gorgeous, believe me, but by the time I’d finished juggling three different color skeins for that many rows of garter stitches (in laceweight) I’d had enough. I decided I was wearing it as is, no blocking necessary. (Because LACEWEIGHT.) But this weekend, I finally got around to blocking a bunch of things and, almost as an afterthought, I decided to block Color Affection too.
Have you ever tried blocking curved garter stitch in laceweight? What a PITA. How to block the shawl but keep the edges smooth, without making ‘points’ from the pins that aggressive blocking often creates? I was stumped. Laceweight yarn but not lace, and no straight sides for wires. Then I had a brilliant idea. I pinned the top of the shawl in a smooth, somewhat curved line from tip to tip, which ensured I blocked out the small camel hump from section one, as well as uncurling the ends of the shawl.
And then I stood the entire thing up against the wall to dry.
Worked like a charm.
I’m not sure how successful this would have been if it were a much heavier yarn, but the laceweight had just enough weight that it draped perfectly, resulting in a beautiful curved edge on the bottom. As it dried, I even adjusted the top curve a bit to ensure it was smooth — I didn’t want the camel hump in the solid section, and the ends were both very curly because of the m1’s — but I’ve seen others try to block this as a straight edge, and I just feel the curve is supposed to be there. It’s part of the charm of the piece. But had I tried to pin all of that in place, I never would have gotten the same result as I did with letting gravity do its thing.
Desperate blocking calls for desperate measures, yo.
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