OH!

I put the front and back of the Turbulence U-necked sweater into the washbasin, left it a few minutes and then lifted it out. The whole garment kind of sighed and relaxed. It is now the right size!!! Nobody could be more surprised than me. I'm so glad I didn't a) sling it into the garbage or b) pull the whole thing back and re-knit it in a larger size. The wonders of blocking!

Would You Spend One Whole Hour Blocking Tangerine Acrylic?

No, I thought not. But I am learning to how to block more than trying to improve artificial yarn - I find the measuring and getting it square very hard - left to myself I produce parallelograms. luckily Andy was around this morning and he helped me again - he might have to go through it ten times, but I'll get it eventually.

It's come out exactly the right size, which is a bit of a mystery because when I did my tension square I got 1 stitch and 1 row too many, but decided I didn't care. In the past, my Alefs have turned out too large, so I'm obviously doing something wrong.

I've already knitted up the shoulders - I did it Lucy Neatby's way. If like me, you struggle to knit off shoulders, use a double-pointed needle to do the three-needle bind off and you can do it in two easy stages - first knit the two shoulders together, then go back and bind off the row of stitches. It's so perfect, so easy, so Lucy.