 Hi everyone, Tasha here from Start of School Crochet. I'm going to show you today how to block your squares for the Sweet Treats Cal and just in general how to block squares. If you haven't already, if you're new to my channel, please subscribe and give it a like and a thumbs up and I want to say welcome if you're new. Thanks for being here. So I just finished my square that's going to be released on Friday for the Sweet Treats Cal and I love the way it turned out but as you can see it's a little bit wonky. My tension was off so there's ways to fix that if your square doesn't look perfectly square when you finish it and that's called steaming and this is my first time steam blocking actually so we're gonna learn this together you guys. This is what I got off Amazon. I'll put the link in the description down below. So far it looks great. I watched one of Tony Lipsy's tutorials and I really was inspired to grab me one of these so if you want to grab one down the comments I will put the link. I'm gonna open this box up and it says it's a 100% guarantee so that's fabulous. Let's hope that that is. So let's unbox this together. You can always fast forward to the steaming part if you just want to get rid of go through this part. So it looks like it comes with this is a manual. It's like a nice good manual. Looks like a good troubleshooting guide and then there's a QR code to register it which is always good. You want to protect your purchases. So it's wrapped in plastic. It looks like it's a nice size. It doesn't look too heavy or cumbersome. I have a large steamer that I used to clean my house with. It's very heavy and cumbersome and I actually thought about using it for blocking but I was like nope. Don't think so. This looks pretty nice. It comes with a water cup. This I have no idea what this is yet but I'm sure I'll find out. This looks like it's used to brush stuff off but we're not gonna need any of that. I don't think. So the reservoir is pretty nice. Oh and it comes out pretty nice. It says an important notice. Make sure you read those. Alright let's get started. Okay so it says to fill the water reservoir which is this with water that's not treated tap water. So I'm gonna go ahead and use some azarca that I have because I don't want to ruin my device right off the bat. I don't know what it would do if it's treated tap water but I really don't want to risk that because I'm kind of cautious like that. I'm gonna read my directions. Oh here we go. This is why it's so important to read directions and I'm always like in such a hurry that I just want to like come on let's go let's do it let's do it. Alright so I'm gonna pour in here but I'm not gonna do it over. Well maybe I can very carefully. Oh my gosh I'm not spilling it. It's a miracle. It says that it is ready to steam in less than 30 seconds I think which is awesome. So we can get straight to it after we do our pinning. Okay so all the water's in. I'm going to close this puppy up put it back in here. There we go. Now it's time to plug it in. I think we turn it on and it flashes a green light. Okay but so when this becomes solid and doesn't flash anymore that's when it will be ready to use. Wow they weren't quit kidding it really was 30 seconds. It's solid already. Okay but we need to block this first with pins so we're gonna do that and I'm gonna set this aside. I went ahead and got some of these. Really awesome Knitter's Pride knit blockers. These are really great because they have lots of pins and they can go pretty deep on a mat but it makes it a whole lot easier to just block out your project. But first I wanted to say if you're using like I'm using a mat that doesn't have any kind of numbers or guides on it for you what I'm gonna do is kind of create my own little guides because this is just a child's mat and it doesn't have anything so I'm not really sure how big each square is going to be and I really really they want it to be all the same size for the blanket because I want the blanket to look uniform and and good. So what I'm gonna do is take a pin and I'm gonna mark it out or put make little punch holes actually because I don't want any kind of pin going into my project so I'm gonna do that. So what I'm gonna do is line these up in like a T kind of like if I had an L shaped thing. So I'm gonna mark off from 0 to 12 inches and just put a dot at every inch mark. Okay so I have 12 there starting at zero. I'm gonna move it on over and add two more inches on that side and then I'm gonna add two more inches over on this side too. Go ahead and block this up. I'm gonna start off in the corner over here and kind of try to line it up with those holes that I created and use smaller corner ones that have four sticking in there. It looks pretty good. So now we're gonna start steaming. We push the little button here in the front. Let's see if it works. Oh yeah there it goes. So steam is coming out. You're going to hold it just over probably like this far over your project. You don't want it to touch it but pretty close and just slowly run it along and it's supposed to actually dry pretty quick after you steam it. So I'm gonna go through kind of like in rows I guess. Oh yeah I can feel it. I'm gonna go along the edges just to get those powder stitches. All right that's it. So you're gonna wait just a few minutes. You can do whatever you want. I don't know about you but I'm kind of really impatient and I want it to dry right now. Wow okay so it's already dry. I think it's been it's only been about five minutes and it's already dry. I hope I did it right. So I'm gonna go ahead and take these off and see what we have. Wow okay that looks fabulous. Look at how nice it looks and it just lays so so beautifully. Okay that's awesome. I love it. So my square is about 16 inches with the border which is gonna make for quite a large blanket. But I'm excited about it. So that's like 12. I'm gonna mark that there. Yep it's about 16 inches. Perfect. Okay you guys I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Please leave a comment if you have any questions about this. I will leave the links for these knit blockers by Knitter's Pride in the description below. I'll also leave a link for the steamer down below. Wow I'm really impressed by this and I'm super excited about it. I can't wait to finish my blanket and do all the squares. Oh and if you want you can grab the link below for the Sweet Treats crochet along where it's a free crochet along. It's going on from January 28th until April 22nd and then we're gonna do two weeks of working the border and also giving away prizes. The yarn was gifted and gifted by WeCrochet and it is Brava worsted weight and it's beautiful. They have tons of colors so you can choose any yarn you want for the crochet along. I love the way this turned out. I'm excited. Alright guys happy crocheting.