Blocking can make a project go from looking like this:

before block

To this:

hemlock ring 2

Remember the yarn recycling tutorial? The cotton/ramie sweater became the Hemlock Ring throw. Just an aside fyi; the recycling tute is the single most visited post on my blog with more than double the hits than any other! Anyways, the color in the picture directly above is the most accurate.

center ring

hemlock close up

The only reason I think the color came out so green in the close up shots is because I took the pictures in my bedroom and there’s virtually no light in there.

I did a really hard block on this project because it was so pulled in on itself. I washed it on the hand-wash setting in my washer, then pulled it straight out of there and started stretching it out on the bed. I couldn’t find all of my pins, so I only used a few on the center flower section and was lucky enough that the rest of the throw kind of stuck to the bed as I pulled and forced it in to submission.

I only knit the pattern up to its original bind off point because I was starting to get a little nervous about running out of yarn and I’m glad I stopped because if I’d made it as big as I’d originally wanted, it probably would have taken days to bind off!  Turns out I had enough yarn that I could have gone through at least another three or four repeats, but I’m happy it’s finished.

Now I can only wait until May 9th and hope that my Mom likes it!