Hi Amanda,

Thanks so much for commenting and congrats on finishing your baby blanket! Blocking is mainly necessary to straighten out edges and smooth out lumps, so it’s purely aesthetic and not necessary to the integrity of the piece. Here’s my tutorial on blocking if you choose to take this route: https://littleworldofwhimsy.com/how-to-block-acrylic-yarn-the-easy-way-in-3-simple-steps/. As a gentle reminder, do not iron any acrylic yarn (like Sweet Snuggles yarn) since the yarn will melt!

FYI- this is my first time crocheting ANYTHING so I never did blocking before, only read about it…

Hi Ari,

Thanks so much for your question! I’ve run into this problem before with velvet/blanket yarn. Because the texture is so rough, it can be really hard to close the magic loop. The way I’ve gotten around this is to make sure that my magic loop is extremely small when I start out, since it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to close it any further. If you try this and it’s difficult to keep the magic loop small without undoing it accidentally, I would also suggest using the “chain two” magic loop technique. Essentially, you would just chain two and use the first chain as the “magic loop,” thus eliminating any need to close it further. This can be tricky because the chain will be quite small, but you can choose between the two methods and find which works best for you. Let me know if this helps!

With love,
Julia

H Jamie! I personally haven’t tried joining ends with it since I was using it for amigurumi (which don’t require a huge amount of yarn). I think if I need to change colors, I would just leave a tail at the back and then tie a knot/weave in the ends. This suggestion admittedly works better for amigurumi where you can hide tails easily, but I think it would be okay for a blanket as well. I doubt you would be able to felt together the ends since the yarn is polyester, not wool, sadly 🙁 Let me know if this helps!