Seven mother flipping days. I’m not surprised really cause that stack was huge (and that was only half my squares!), but I am definitely less and less impressed with this whole blocking board thing every step of the way.

And! And and and! Look at this nonsense! Is that mold!? It’s mold, people! Mold! Thank god I plan on washing this blanket before giving it to a baby to use.

For anyone who missed my previous posts in this experiment (There’s links on the right to read old posts. Look for the [TBONTB] tag and get caught up.), I set 15 worsted weight squares onto a blocking board exactly 8 days ago. I have been able to take one or two off the top as they dried, but the very last three didn’t come off until last night. And that was because I got fed up and put a fan on it.

My husband has already designed a new and improved blocking board with a built in computer fan on the bottom to encourage air flow through the squares and promote faster drying. I told him not to bother just yet. I still think this whole business is a waste of time.

Now, I admit that there is probably a better way to go about this. If I were to decide that a blocking board is a useful addition to my tool chest, I would likely block two or three squares at a time as they were completed. That way they’d dry overnight and prevent any of this mold nonsense from recurring. But even that seems like a pain. To go through the hassle of pulling everything out, getting everything wet, going through the whole process every few days? It would have to be a serious and obvious improvement over my current method (which is literally fuck all and join as you go).

Now, I can’t deny that blocking my squares has had an effect. It’s irrefutable. It’s quite plain that the blocked motifs are perfectly square and the patterns are crisp and clear. The blocking has done its work as intended.

But did it really need to happen? I still say probably not, but I’m going to see this experiment through to the end in good faith.

The next step is to join all the squares and add a simple border around the whole thing. Will we be able to tell the difference between the blocked and the unblocked squares after they’ve been joined? I’m interested to see, because I honestly don’t know.

The real test will come after, when I block the whole thing at once using my usual method. Now those results I’m pretty cocky about.

Stay tuned, hookers.

