Blocking lace and fixing snags

Happy Holidays to you Claudia!

I'm wondering if you'd be better off just pinning the points because, if I'm visualising this correctly, you'd still need a way to keep the string in the right shape. I've just finished taking a lace knitting class. The teacher suggested pinning onto a towel which is laid on a carpet (if you have one) or a bed. You can get special blockers (metal rods with plastic covering) which are threaded through the edge (if the item is straight) or through the points.

I'm interested to hear what other, more experienced people have to say about this.

Eimear

Eimar is probably right; pins or blocking wires are probably better than nylon cord. However, since you have some yarn left, you could test make a little swatch and test block it with the nylon fishline, the heavy nylon cord, etc. and see what happens.

Definitely do it before blocking.

Snags in knitting can always be repaired. It just takes patience. I use the tip of a knitting needle and slowly work the extra slack back through stitch after stitch, making each stitch just a tiny bit looser, until all the slack is worked back in. It helps to look carefully first to see which side the pull yanked tighter, so you're reloosening the stitches that were yanked too tight by the original snag.

Alpaca silk blends puzzle me, because alpaca is amazingly stretchy. (I once copied an alpaca hat in wool and discovered that I had to increase the number of stitches a whole lot because the wool didn't stretch anywhere near as much.) Silk, on the other hand, is about as _non_stretchy a fiber as you can get. Do they equal out, or does the silk prevent stretch while the alpaca makes it fuzzy?

=Tamar

if you knit a lot with fibers which need blocking, make a blocking frame or board.Here is how the DH and I made mine. 1 sheet of 1/4 inch plywood (3'x5')A sheet of 3 inch foam rubber large enough to cover the plywood and 1 inch gingham check fabric 45 inches wide and 1 and 1/2 yards long.Use spray adhesive to secure the foam to the plywood or the heavy duty staples used for carpet, stretch the fabric over the foam/plywood making sure that the grain of the fabric is not biased. Fold the excess over the ends and sides of the board and staple in place. This gives you a large, flat surface marked with 1 inch squares. Stainless steel T-pins work quite well for pinning the pieces which need blocking.DA