I completed the Laminaria shawl I’ve been working on since late April. It’s on my floor drying some more as I type this. If you followed along from the previous post you know this means that I finished the shawl before my copy of A Stitch In Time arrived. That should be happening mid next week, hopefully.
First I’d like to make a statement I will probably take back at some point in the future. I dislike hanks of yarn, this project has almost taught me to dispise them. Before this shawl I’d never used yarn in a hank before, and thought they were neat because they look like the symbol for enfinity. I didn’t have the foresight to look up how to best unwind the hank for use, and thought it would be like a skein, just pull and for the most part it won’t tangle. Boy oh boy was I wrong. The first two hanks ended in such a tangle I had friends picking at them at a pub quiz trying desperately to salvage the yarn. Once I moved on to the third I decided to look up the best way to use a hank, and found that I would have to unwind the entire thing on a chairback and then wind it back into a ball. The process took about half an hour each time.
The ball of yarn the hank turned into.
Despite the trauma of unravelling the hanks, I still managed to finish the final two charts of the knitting quickly, which meant it was time for blocking. Having never blocked before I did some searching around before I started, to see what I needed to do. The pattern liked to this tutorial by Yarn Harlot, which I read to get the basic idea. I also looked at what Knitty.com had to say about blocking, because I vaguely remembered the fact that I was using 100% silk might change the process a little. Knitty had the following to say on the subject, which is why I went into this project a bit aprehensive.
Silk garments can grow since silk is inelastic and has little memory; I personally find silk best in a blend. Silk is very fragile when wet, so wet blocking is NOT recommended. Pin out to required dimensions, spritz, and let dry.
I was fairly excited about blocking for the first time, it looked tedious and time consuming. Two things I really enjoy. Once I finished the knitting part of the shawl I was fairly disapointed with how it looked, none of the patterns that were supposed to be in the lace showed at all. I put that down to my yarn being to think and my needle size too large, and my general capaticy for screwing things up. But, once I started pinning the edges down all of a sudden the patterns emerged and it was beautiful.
The centre edge as I started blocking
I blocked the entire monster out, the whole process taking about forty minutes after stripping my bed. I then filled an empty fabreeze bottle with water and sprayed it. This was at six pm. I left it to dry looking as follows. I appologise for the poor quality of the photo, lighting in the area was using for blocking was far from ideal.
Fully blocked shawl
I returned to my room at ten pm hoping it would be dry so I could rest a bit, since I’m a bit ill. Alas, it was still damp, but seemed to be holding it’s form, so I unpinned everything and put the sheets and duvet back on my bed so I could take a bit of a rest. I moved the shawl onto the floor, still in the same position as it was on the bed, only without the pins. I also wove in the loose ends. I’m hoping despite being moved too early that it will still retain it’s shape. If not, I’ll just try again at a later date.
I will probably edit this tomorrow to add a photo of the finished shawl if it kept its shape over night.
