I'm delighted to say that blocking is complete.
It involves soaking the item for around 20 minutes in warm water. Extremes of temperature can cause felting, as can too much agitation of the item in the water; twenty minutes is time enough for water to soak right through to the core of the yarn. You can see here that the yarn "bled" a little. This often happens with artisan dyed yarn.
Then you wrap the sodden object in a towel and squish as much water as you can out of it. The aim is to have it just damp, all the way through. This means you can stretch the item out and pin it into the shape you want.
I took pic of this stage but accidentally deleted it, I'm afraid.
The blocking process, as well as setting the shape of the piece, evens up the stitches a treat! The reason your grandma's knitting looks so neat and even is because of the numerous times it's been washed. All that gentle shoogling of the stitches evens out the wonky tension between them.
The result:
I'm a happy bunny. Thank you BigV! x
