First Blocking Attempt

Believe it or not, I have never blocked a finished project before. Never. I probably should have for many of them but I was just worried about what the finished product would look like. Since there were very detailed blocking instructions included with the Branching Out scarf I decided to give it a try. Here's my scarf pre-blocking:

Please excuse the old mattress in my office. Here's a close up of the end before blocking:

It actually doesn't look bad. I took a deep breath, ran the cool water and thoroughly soaked the scarf in my sink:

I gently squeezed out the excess water and then pressed it between two towels a few times. Gently again, I pinned the scarf to the bed without stretching it too much:

I got another close up of the end of the scarf here:

I do like how it lays flatter than before but I'm not seeing a huge difference. It could be because I think this is an acrylic yarn and I didn't want it to grow too much more. It easily stretched out a foot longer than before and I think it will be a nice gift for my mother when it's finished drying. Now my challenge is to keep the cats off it. You'd think the quilting pins would keep them away but no luck there.

My biggest take away from this is that if I want to get serious about making lace scarves or shawls I need to pick up some of those blocking wires. I definitely see their value now after doing this once.