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I have a bunch of things in progress, but no good finished photos yet. My Egeblad blanket has been keeping me warm, but I need to get some good photos in sunlight to really show it off. It's very lightweight and full of lacy holes, but it's SO warm. I can feel it heating up on my legs like something alive.

I have nearly finished my first Baby Surprise Jacket (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/baby-surprise-jacket on Ravelry) from Elizabeth Zimmerman's "Knitting Workshop". It's a crazy garter stitch jacket that has two seams, one on the top of each arm. It's only missing buttons because I am still hunting for the perfect set.

I'm busily knitting Alita http://www.yarnover.net/patterns/doilies/kunststrik/alita.html in dark green heather Cascade 220.



I am the happy owner of all three volumes of Christine Duchrow's Knitted Lace Patterns. Volume III contains the pattern for Egeblad, although it isn't called that in the book. I originally found the pattern I used on Ravelry and it linked to a free download online. That was a happy accident because her books are all in German. I just spent part of the evening printing German-English knitting vocabulary lists and using Babelfish to translate the pattern from her book. Let's just say Babelfish isn't really designed to translate knitting terminology. The term for scalloped border came out as "the serrated conclusion."

Once I could figure out her instructions, I converted her early 20th century charts into modern symbols. Then I compared my translated chart to the chart for my Egeblad blanket and noted only one error and one change. The modern version had single yarn overs instead of doubles, which is good for a blanket because the holes are smaller.

It was a great learning exercise and it helped to do a translation where I was able to check my work. I'm not used to working from charts and her books are reprints of pamphlets. The pamphlets show a handful of similar doilies that can be knitted from a single chart, or by mixing, matching or omitting parts of charts to make them smaller or larger. Each whole "pamphlet" is maybe five pages with minimal notes and no line-by-line instructions at all. It's good practice for when I try knitting a Niebling pattern, because those are all German and charted too.

Last but not least, I have new yarn! Mom and I went to my first Shepherd's Market yesterday. I was well behaved and managed to get out with one hank of hand-dyed sport weight and some soap. We watched a very educational felting demonstration and I plan to try that sometime soon. I need to be frugal for a little while, but I think I found a good source of colored merino roving samplers for future use.

So this yarn.. it's destined to be another Baby Surprise Jacket. I wanted something unisex and slightly lighter than worsted, with enough colors to be interesting, but not overwhelming. Look how beautiful!

Blood, Sweat and Tears - Blocking Egeblad

I knitted another doily blanket - Egeblad by Christine Duchrow (http://www.yarnover.net/patterns/doilies/kunststrik/egeblad.html). It is a fantastic pattern with a swirling flower in the center and concentric, yet slightly offset, radiating leaves. I knit this one with Beaverslide McTaggart Tweeds in the color "Prairie Sandreed" on US10's.

This was interesting to block, so I decided to document my way of doing it, from start to finish.

Since I fell in love with knitting doily blankets, I wanted a good way to wash them. I went out and shopped in the home storage section of a local store. I found two plastic totes - one clear one and one white one with holes like you'd use to store kid's toys or cleaning supplies. The one with holes fits nicely inside the clear one. I chose clear so I could see if dye was leaching out of yarn as I washed it.

I filled the clear one half-full with tepid water and a squirt of Ivory soap. Then I put my blanket it the white one and submerged it. With a little swishing, I saturated the blanket and left it to soak for a little while. Beaverslide is great yarn, but it has the occasional piece of Montana prairie in it and it still has some lanolin. This yarn wasn't as greasy as the Prairie Aster Fisherman Weight, but it was still sheepy enough to want a good soak.



Next, the white tote lifted right out and let the blanket drain while I refilled the clear tote with fresh tepid water. This is where the totes pay for themselves because wet wool should never be lifted without supporting its weight. I can squeeze the fabric against one side to get excess water out, but mostly gravity does its thing. You also never want to run water directly on wool because that can contribute to felting.



I repeated this until the water was clear and the soap suds were gone. Prairie Aster made the water fairly purple, but this Prairie Sandreed really held the dye well through washing. The last soak was tepid water with Eucalan. Eucalan is great stuff because it smells really good and it protects the yarn from moths. There is no need to rinse and the wool comes out deliciously soft.

I block on my bed and wet, soggy wool would be an unmitigated disaster. My washing machine does not have an easily programmed spin cycle, so I use towels to get the wool mostly dry. I grabbed three or four thirsty towels in colors that wouldn't show any last dye residue. I spread one out flat on the bathroom floor, carefully spread the wet blanket in as near to a single layer as possible and rolled it up like a jelly roll.



Next, I stomped all over the roll in my bare feet. This really gets the water out of the blanket and into the towels. Your socks will get soaked if you don't take them off. This is the therapeutic part of blocking. Stomp. Stomp.



Now comes the blood, sweat and tears part of blocking. I laid the blanket out on my bed, using a spare comforter to protect the mattress.

1. Pin the center.
2. Pin the tips of all of the flower petals. Stretch the fabric out so they lay flat. I pin through the decreases because the stitches are thicker and hold the pins better. If the fabric is puckering or looking stressed, use more pins. Any stressed areas will show in your finished blanket, but you want to stretch this enough to make it lay flat and open the stitch patterns. The whole thing needs to spread out, but don't put all of that work on one poor little stitch.

See how the two petals look different before and after pinning?



3. Move out to the next layer and pin the tips of those points too.




4. Now work systematically around the blanket, stretching it and pinning the points of the leaves. Grab big handfuls of fabric and hold it down with the flat of your hand. Again, don't stress individual stitches here. Pull out and sideways to make the pattern open up. Use LOTS of pins.



5. When you get to the border, pin the stitches at the very tips of the leaves to anchor the edges.



6. Evenly spread out the scallops and pin through the stitches. Egeblad blocks into a perfect circle, without the ruffled edges of the Hemlock Ring. If you try to do this step first, it's really difficult to get the middle to open up. Point of note, I crocheted five chains on these scallops instead of eight per the pattern. They're still quite open so I possibly could have done three.



At this point, my back and neck are aching, I've poked myself with a multitude of pins and I think it's never going to end. Remember when I said use a lot of pins? I started with 500 and ended with..



After 45 minutes or so, I was done pinning. It was so worth it though. Look at this: