Block Party

Thanks so much to everyone who commented on my first post and helped out on the Knittyboard with my font formatting woes! (Here is a super helpful link to a html code cheatsheet someone suggested).
Now as I threatened promised, here is a picture of my very first almost-sweater.


This is Klaralund in pieces from the second book by Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton for Noro and mine is knit in Silk Garden colorway 34. After coming across Mari’s version on her blog, I decided that I had to have one and when a bag of the discontinued color came up for sale on ebay...…
Klaralund is purported to be a great first sweater as it is essentially composed of four rectangles that are seamed together. So far, it has been a super easy knit (mostly St st, great while watching TV) that has resulted in the four pieces in the above picture. Now all that remains is to finish weaving in the ends, block, and seam into a finished garment. So why am I dawdling and dragging my feet? Well, I have blocked exactly zero times in my life. Of course, being the nerd that I am, I have attempted to read all the advise that I can find on blocking but all that has accomplished is to immobilized me with indecision. Dunk in water and pin out? Pin to shape and steam? Spritz with water and iron? Mold and fix into shape with mental powers?
My mother, a former avid knitter who has never, ever wet-blocked (had never in fact even heard of the practice of dunking pieces of knitting in water and pinning out to dry before she moved to this country), merely made non-committal noises when I recited to her the opinion of many that Silk Garden needed wet blocking to bloom and soften and all that jazz. I had originally been determined to follow said consensus of many (when in doubt, be a lemming and leap) until I stopped and considered just how cold, damp, and sunlight-less my apartment is (It is otherwise quite lovely. Really!). Thinking about how long it usually takes my towels to dry, I began to have visions of carefully pinned out and mold-encrusted sweater pieces whenever I thought about wet blocking. So, onto Plan B*...pin and steam! This will be the event of the weekend. Wish me luck!
*Plan C should Plan B fail (and hopefully not in such a way that results in felted squares): trip to my parents'’ warm, sunny, and non-damp house an hour away for some fun with water, pins, the almost-sweater, and a cliff.