The Magic of Blocking

Unblocked knitted lace often reminds me of sea slugs or nudibranchs.Here is the bluest nudibranch I could find so you can see what I mean. (Lots of pictures - the one I was looking at is right on the top of the page.)

After I blocked this to 16 points, I looked at the photo in the booklet and saw they had blocked it to 32. Now what am I going to do with a 24x14-inch woolly Leberblümchen?

I'm not sure. At one point I thought about running long circular needles through it, blocking it to a smooth oval, and wearing it as a hood/kerchief/thingie.

I knew that Leberblümchen meant liver-flower (hepatica), so I went looking online for photos of the German hepatica, and learned that the Hepatica triloba that grew in the woods where I grew up is the same as Hepatica nobilis.

This link is to a gallery showing some of the variability in color (I've seen them from white to pinkish to this lavender-blue) and number of petals.

And here is someone's gorgeous close-up of hepatica flowers.

Now I'm feeling terrifically homesick for the place I grew up, which doesn't exist as I remember it any more.