No, not the sort of sauna some of you in the northern hemisphere seem to be experiencing at the moment. The sort of sauna that is required to dry wet blocked knits with any sort of speed in mid winter.

Last night I finished the left front of the Debbie Bliss Cabled Jacket.

I was very pleasantly surprised by the speed at which it knit up. I was somewhat panicked by the alarming behaviour of the garter stitch button band. So this morning, in the midst of a toddler toilet training debacle (and really I thought we were well past those issues), I washed what seemed like everything I have knit this year and then some. A few of them went outside on the airer. The ones that needed blocking went into my newly devised sauna, previously knows as the “master” bedroom.

The thing about our house is that it contains a small child, a small dog and very little space for anything else. The idea that our bedroom is a “master” anything is so laughable that I am unable to even take a photo to prove my point. The room is so small and so crowded with furniture (ie bed, wardrobe and small desk) that it is simply not possible to take any sort of sensible photo in there (though you can photograph part of the bed if you stand in the hallway). Small items can sometimes be blocked under the desk (one must first relocate all the items normally stored under the desk) but these ain’t no small items and drastic measures were called for.

There is a blocking party happening on my bed right now and I have no idea how I am going to explain it to Jesse when he decides he wants to go to sleep. Given that I like sleep too I have had a blow heater and a fan blowing away in there all day. Well actually they shorted out the power board when I first set them up, so its been about 6 hours of active drying so far. It really is a sauna in there. I so hope we can sleep on our bed tonight.

Oh, and the blocking completely resolved my issues with the garter stitch band, in the process creating a whole new set of fears regarding just how huge this sweater will be. I don’t think it has actually grown that much in the blocking process, but seeing it with the ribbing relaxed and the stocking stitch edges uncurled it looks a whole lot bigger. I wanted a great big cuddly sweater for the really cold days of winter. But at the same time I generally wear fairly fitted (though not tight) clothing as this seems to be more flattering on me. Like most women I am vain enough that I don’t want to end up looking twice the size I actually am. Why is it that you have to be built like a twig to still look slim in bulky clothes and everyone else looks much bigger than they actually are?