Allllllllmost there!

I finally got around to weaving in the ends and washing and blocking the shawl from hell.

I'm a cheapskate. I don't have a blocking board. I have considered buying a cork-board and making one, but I haven't done it yet. Honestly, besides being cheap, I'm also lazy. I rarely block things. The last time I blocked something was one of my first knitting projects - a poncho that included a crocheted lace inset. I pinned it to the carpet and went to town with the steam iron.

We don't have carpet in this house. Eventually, I'm sure, I'll need to get a blocking board. But I'm pretty sure this shawl, if not the next one I make, would be too big for the blocking board anyway.

A knitting and spinning genius I work with suggested this method. My dowel rods were too short, so I folded the shawl in half. At each "point" I tied a loop of trash yarn. I lashed the loops to the dowel, and the dowel to the rafters in my basement. On the end of the dowel with the longer lashings, I tied the dowel to a paint can, to keep the pressure on and the dowel from sliding itself out of the yarn. (Full disclosure, I had lashed the dowels to the shawl in the 2nd-story bathroom, where I had washed the shawl. The bottom dowel fell out as soon as I let go of it - I didn't have the tension right).