{"id":299,"date":"2012-02-11T12:53:03","date_gmt":"2012-02-11T20:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kheryn.com\/blog\/?p=299"},"modified":"2012-02-11T12:53:03","modified_gmt":"2012-02-11T20:53:03","slug":"blocked-on-blocking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kheryn.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/11\/blocked-on-blocking\/","title":{"rendered":"Blocked on Blocking"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Knitting<\/a>Wet blocked the Knittin’ Pretty Shell today. I’m not sure whether it will dry fast enough to finish this weekend. I have my regular knitting group tomorrow, but it will have to be 100% ready to unpin by tomorrow morning, and that just seems a little fast.<\/p>\n

It ended up a bit longer than I expected. I’m fairly confident I measured at ~20″ above the lace edging originally (with the lace edging adding about 2-3″. The final piece is looking to be about 27.5″ long, and the edging is ~2.5″.\u00a0 I didn’t stretch it much vertically myself while pinning it down, so I’m not sure where the extra 5″ came from. The arm holes are about 7.5″ high, so it should still fit fine, just be a little longer than I thought. I didn’t have any issues with the width. The lace part wanted to be a little bit wider, but the main stockinette stitch seemed to fit comfortably at the 16″ width.<\/p>\n

\"Knittin'<\/a>After finishing the shell knitting, I frogged one of my original swatches to make this curvy swatch. The pattern (optionally) suggest crocheting around the neck & arm holes. The Ravelry project that inspired me to use this particular yarn<\/a> used a solid color for edging and I rather like the effect. I have some size 3 cotton thread I think will work really well color wise, but I will probably need to double or triple to get the right effect. Rather than experiment on the final product, I’m hoping this curvy swatch will let me figure out what will look good. I wasn’t sure if there would be a noticeable difference trying to edge the blocked vs unblocked knitting, so I figured I may as well block this, too.<\/p>\n

\"Kinetik<\/a>I haven’t made any progress on my Kinetik<\/a> in about a week. I haven’t had much crafting time that didn’t involve too many distractions, and this is definitely a project that requires concentration. It’s a little frustrating having the feeling that I’m “falling behind” in the knitalong. Laura Nelkin<\/a> has really been driving a great community around this mystery knitalong in her Ravelry group<\/a>, which has been really encouraging! It’s looking like I might have a little more time for this in the week ahead, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to finish up Clue #3 soon and start working on Clue #4.\u00a0 I’m still not sure exactly what this is going to be (it’s a mystery knitalong), but it looks pretty!<\/p>\n

\"Coed<\/a>Since I had a gap where there was no more knitting for the shell and my Kinetik is too intense to work on while I’m commuting, I started another Chicks With Sticks<\/a> pattern: Coed Ribbed Wrist Warmers. This is proving to be a quick knit. I’m looking forward to having something to keep my hands warm in the office! I originally intended to just knit these in the round, even though the pattern is written flat, so I could avoid seaming. However, I got it into my head that I really wanted to try a tubular cast on, and most of them have dire warnings about trying to do the cast on in the round. (I ended up following Ysolda Teague<\/a>‘s Long Tail Tubular Cast on for 1\u00d71 or 2\u00d72 Rib<\/a>.) I could have joined after the cast on was finished so I only had one or two rows to stitch up, but I was feeling a bit lazy and decided to leave it flat. Besides, this way I can figure out where to leave the thumb hole to fit me properly after I’ve completed the knitting rather than risking having to rip rows out if I guess wrong.\u00a0 Seaming isn’t that<\/em> painful, after all. I’m not sure what kind of bind off to use. My searches on tubular cast on for 2×2 rib yielded some tantalizing suggestions that there might also be similarly invisible bind offs, but I haven’t jumped down that rabbit hole yet.<\/p>\n