This is for everyone who writes to me and says their knitting isn’t as pretty as mine.  I’ll let you in on a little secret.  Mine isn’t either.  Or rather, the knitting when it falls off the needles isn’t as pretty as the carefully blocked and enthusiastically lint rollered knitting I usually show you in pictures. So just to make everyone else feel better, I’ll show you the before shot.  Ends flapping in the breeze, crown all wrinkly, stockinette less than smooth.

It always looks like this at this stage.  Always.  If your knitting looks like this, you haven’t done anything wrong, you’re just not done yet.  The blocking makes it better (and I’ll show you that later, once the thing finishes drying).