Blocking in Stages

I'm finally getting around to blocking my St. Brigid Aran sweater — the one I had finished knitting for Ravellenics. I was hoping to have a chunk of time with which to block it over a single weekend, but so far that hasn't happened.

I really want to finish this sweater, so I decided to take some time in the evening during the week. My plan was to steam block the sweater and use a closed-off room to lock the pieces away from the kittens. The pieces were small enough to keep it confined to a room (unlike my Knit Swirl sweater).

However, as I started blocking the right & left front pieces, I realized quickly that I was going to need to block this in stages.  First, it took a lot long than anticipated to run the blocking wires through the pattern pieces to make each cable stand out. It took about 30 minutes to block each front piece (running the wires through the fabric, steam blocking, and pinning everything out to the measurements).

It took four blocking wires for just one front piece (8 wires for both left and right); I only have 13 blocking wires in the kit.

I left the some of the edges to be seamed alone, per Amy Herzog's technique

I could tell that the sleeves would require even more wires. I was not going to have enough to block everything all at once. I could wait until the weekend to run down to my LYS to buy more blocking wires or just do this in stages.

I'm opting for stages right now, because if I don't do it in stages and wait until I have all of the necessary elements in place, I won't be able to finish this sweater. At least in this way, I am making measurable progress. Patience is the very difficult key to this operation.

 
Blocking is really making the cables POP!