Right, so…blocking. Every now and then I say ‘a big part of the reason my pieces look the way they look is because I am picky about my blocking, so if you want the thing you make to look as much as possible like the thing I made, this is how I blocked mine, and you could do the same thing with yours if you want.’ And every time I do, there are a handful of folks who hear ‘you are required to block things the exact way I block things, and if you don’t, you are a bad person and a worse knitter, and I am mad at you, and I’m sending moths to carry off your entire stash, one bite at a time.’

I’d call that a radical interpretation of the text (Buffy deep cut).

Because I assure you, I truly and deeply do not care if you block your knits or not. I do care that you know how blocking works and what blocking does so you can make informed decisions about whether you want to block! And if you do decide to block, I want you to feel comfortable and confident doing it, so I often tell you how I do it. And I do, truly, way down deep in the very core of my being, believe that just about any project benefits from blocking. But I don’t actually care if you, personally, block your knitting or not. Because you are the boss of your knitting (plus, you know, bodily autonomy is cool like that).

With that said, blocking these takes literally 30 seconds of active time, a little bit of water, and a space you can set some damp knitting for a couple hours to dry. No really, that’s it.

Get it all the way soaked. For something like this, I’d usually just run it under the bathroom tap and squeeze it in my fist to get it all the way wet, but you can also throw it in a bowl or a cup or whatever else you have handy that can hold water for a little while (wool can be slow to take on water, so it helps to either leave it to soak for a while or squeeze it in your fist a bit to make sure it’s wet all the way through). Squeeze out the excess water. You can just do it with your hand, or you can squeeze it in a dish towel (or any other clean towel you’ve got handy) to get a little more water out if you want (this is just so it will dry faster, it’s totally optional). Smooth it out on some surface where you feel comfortable leaving damp knitting for a few hours (countertop, plate, folded up towel, pretty much anything that’s not going to be hurt by damp fabric and where your knitting won’t wander off). Pat it into shape (no pins, no mats, no wires, just pat it out with your fingers until you like the shape). Let it dry. That’s it…it literally takes longer to type than to do (assuming you don’t count the drying time, and even I, a strong proponent of blocking, do not recommend closely supervising the drying part).

If you don’t want to, that’s fine. If you just decide not to, that’s cool too! But if you try and tell me it’s too hard or too time consuming or requires too much equipment (again, in this specific case…blocking a giant lace shawl is a different and much more involved project), I’m going to gently lower one eyebrow and tilt my head slightly to the side and say ‘great, totally do whatever works best for you’ while feeling a tiny bit perplexed. But that will be the entire extent of my actions, because again, you get to do what you want. But what I want to do is have lovely blocked eggs. And now I do!

Admin/Navigation:

• I’m posting a series of videos to go along with our upcoming egg pattern. Anyone with any level of membership (yes even the free one) has access to watch all the videos!
• The pattern will be out in a few weeks. Rampant Nonsense folks always get all the new patterns as they come out, and it will be eventually be available to other folks in some format or another.
• You don’t need to watch the videos if you don’t like to learn that way! You an always use the patterns by themselves, you don’t need to watch this to use the pattern. This is just for folks who like to listen to someone talk them through it or want to see it rather than read about it!