We’re having a KAL for Scintillation, and I’d be delighted if you joined us!  I find I want to knit a few more of these, but it feels like some sort of breach of etiquette to knit in my own KAL.  So I’m going to pretend that what I’m doing is using a few more stars as a way to talk about some finer points of making these.  But we all know what I’m really doing is indulging myself and making a few more.  But don’t tell anyone, ok?

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So let’s talk blocking.  If you’re firmly in the ‘I just won’t block anything ever and you can’t make me’ camp, then that’s ok.  You are the boss of your knitting, and you get to to block or not block as you want.  I’m not going to come to your house and menace you with blocking pins.  But if you are on the fence, I wanted to show you how very (veeeeeery) easy this is to do.  I’m going to walk you through it.

So, if you’re not confident in your ability to pin the star out evenly by eye, I’ve got a blocking template in the pattern.  Go ahead and print that out.  Then march your almost compete star (it says in the pattern exactly when to block) off to the nearest sink, turn the water on, stick your star under the water, and give it a good squeeze.  Squash it a few times under the water to get it properly soaked (if you prefer to let it soak in the sink for a few minutes, you can do that too, but I’m going for fastest possible time here, and squeezing it is quick).  Turn off the water, squash it again to get some of the excess water out (if you have a clean hand towel or wash cloth handy, wrap it in that and give it an extra squeeze, it will dry quicker that way).

Now take your star, your printed out paper, and five pins off to something safe to stick pins in (blocking mat, bed, folded up towel, pillow…it’s tiny, the options are endless).  Put the paper on your surface and the star on the paper, pick which line of the blocking guide is the best fit (I like to use the one where I have to stretch it just a tiny bit to reach), pin the points of the star to the points on the guide, and you’re done.  Just wait for it to dry (set it in front of a fan or in the sun to speed it up, or even blast it with a hair dryer if you’re in an absolute tearing hurry).

I suspect it will take you longer to read this post than it will take you to actually soak and pin out the star.  It’s about three minutes start to finish for me.

And again, if you don’t want to, that’s fine.  You get to be in charge of your knitting.  But I’m afraid I’m probably not going to be very sympathetic if you tell me it takes too long!