#knitting resource

98% of the time, I absolutely love the knitting community as a whole.  But, apparently if you bring up knitting in synthetic materials, you open the door to that other 2% of the time where I just don’t understand how you can be that stupidly elitist.

Basically, the blogpost credited as being the most helpful was a self indulgent asshole announcing that “the best way to block synthetic materials is to just not knit with them to begin with!  Spend the extra money on Merino wool and just block that instead!! uwu!” Which, boy howdy that little bubble of a dream world you're living in must be super nice.  Out here, in the real world, sometimes we make things for babies.  Which, historically speaking, tend to puke.  And, seeing as how we want those things worn, it’s a good idea to make them out of something that can be scrubbed in hot water and thrown in a drier so new!mommy can focus on baby instead of the insane care instructions for Merino wool.  But, apparently babies don’t puke in your world.  And everybody has lots of money and access to overpriced yarns because, oh didn’t you know?  Only rich people are allowed to knit in this magical world where babies don’t puke.

The other overwhelmingly popular answer to the question of how to block viscose/synthetic materials seemed to be “synthetics don’t need to be blocked”. Which is news to me.  Really, I am baffled.  Tell me, what exactly are you blocking your knits for if not to put the polished touch on your work?  Because part of that polished touch is to relax the yarn to keep it from, say, curling.  Which, of course, is an attribute of stockinette stitch, not the material the stockinette was knit in.  Oh, but, this must just go back to that bubble dream world again where everyone’s so rich the babies don’t puke and the stockinette doesn’t curl.  Right.

So in the middle of this clusterfuck of elitism, I did stumble upon some brilliantly simple, wise advice from one very sage knitter.  This knitter called to remind others that synthetics are frequently blended, and blends will respond to blocking differently, depending on the ratio of materials involved.  It is, therefore, unwise to go asking the theoretical on the internet for the best way to block these materials.  The best way to know for certain is to knit up a few (yes, few) swatches out of leftover material, recreating your stitch pattern in the swatches, and to test block them in different ways: mist, steam, and wet blocking. Then, pick the result you like the best.

Now see, there’s the 98% of the community I love.  And thank you, sweet knitter, for not being condescending in your answer because, let’s be real, that’s really painfully obvious and I probably should have logically thought of it myself.  Anyway.

On the left is my cowl (still unblocked).  Dat curl, amirite? On the right up top is my wet blocked swatch, and below is my steam blocked.  Very super positive results for both, so it’s kind of making my decision hard because, to be honest, I kind of expected one method to destroy the yarn over the other and give me some very obvious choice but no dice. 

The wet blocking super relaxed my piece and helped the stitches to expand and shape without losing their stretch still.  Which, considering I like a large, cozy cowl sounds kind of appealing.  The downside here is that it did dull some of the shine of the yarn, which was one of the main selling points in originally choosing this brand for me.

The seam blocking did a beautiful job of defining my stitches and maintained the shine, but it’s not quite as stretchy as the wet blocked piece.

Basically, they’re both a “right” answer, depending on what I ultimately decide I want.  Which might end up being decided with a round of “Eeny meeny miny moe”.  Who knows.  Not me.

Anyway, the point of this post is that if someone goes searching on the internet for “how to block viscose” or “how to block synthetic materials”, I’m hoping you can find this post, instead of these elitist dirtbags who pay their babies not to puke.  There is not a thing in the world wrong with working in synthetic materials, they do in fact block (and beautifully, I might add), they just might need a little bit of extra trial and error to get them exactly right.