Nicole’s Hitofude Blocking

First thing on the agenda for this morning was to get Nicole’s Hitofude soaked and blocked. I’ve made two of these, finished Nicole’s and have another one started. It’s such an intriguing pattern that it never gets boring . . at least that’s my opinion. When I look at the Ravelry stats and see that over 7,000 people have made (or started) a Hitofude, and you know not everyone has their project listed on Ravelry, I think that speaks to how fun it is to make.

The blocking process starts with soaking the project in a sink of “room temp” water. At Chad’s house, room temp is anything between 32 degrees and about 50 degrees . . til he walks out the door and then I crank it up to 67 but we’re all still wearing socks and sweatshirts.

Knitted items should not be twisted and wrung out but simply gently squeeze out the excess water. Next, the item is spread across a doubled bath towel.

Roll it all up as tightly as possible.

Next step: Step on it and help squeeze out excess water. The towel should absorb all the water but if there’s more than the towel can absorb, use a second towel and continue squeezing til there’s not much water being absorbed by the towel. Otherwise, some of these projects can take a long time to dry.

Spread it out on the blocking mats. Use pins or wires (or both) to get it to the shape you’d like.

Once it’s dried completely, remove wires and pins and you have yourself a completed project!

FULL DISCLOSURE: After using those blocking wires, I did order myself a set. They’re so easy to use and they zip right through the project. My other wires (flexible and straight) just have wire edges and I have to kinda “feed” the wires through the knitted fabric to keep it from snagging. These were quick and easy. These wires are thicker than my wires, because they’re coated with the plastic. These new ones will probably work better on open or loosely knitted items, especially lacy shawls so I’ll probably still find a use for the old ones.