Review of Block and Roll Blocking Mat

Hey everyone, it's Deja from crocheteverafter.com. Today I'm going to be reviewing the block and roll mat, which is a type of blocking surface that comes rolled up in a mat and it has grid lines on it. So I'm going to see how well this works compared to my Knit Picks blocking mats, which are like interlocking foam mats. So I'm going to unroll this and I'll give you more of a close up view of how this works. The squares, we'll measure them out, and also the back side of it. I unrolled the mat, and you can see that it's a pretty good size. You just take off the ties that you can see coming out over here. Let me get a little closer on the measuring tape so you can see. how big each square is so as you can see if you take a look maybe at the 29 inch mark and then look at the 30 inch mark that you don't have quite a full inch per each grid box it's actually about two centimeters so when i flip over to my centimeter side i get exactly two centimeters per grid box which is great if you're using metric Us in the US, we use a lot of inches, so it's a little bit off for us, but I mostly got it for the grid line so that I can keep my project straight. So I'm about to block something with this. It's supposed to be water resistant and heat resistant, so I'm going to do a water blocking project on a cowl that I've made up. So I will probably full on wet block it, I'll soak it and then put it on and see how well the water holds up. Let me flip this over so you can see the back side of it as well. So as you can see on the back side of the block and roll mat, we have kind of a black foam. It's not super thick. Let me hold it up sideways so you can see that it's probably, you know, maybe a... Eighth of an inch thick possibly. It's got a nice squish to it, but I think that if I left this around the kids They'd probably pull off the back of this because it's not Secure, it's not like another layer holding it, but I'm also thinking that's probably so that it can dry and not produce smells of mildew when it gets wet, so that's probably why it has to be revealed like this But it seems like it's well made. It's got a nice edging all the way around so it shouldn't fray or anything We'll just have to see how well I can line up my lines with it and block out with it. So we'll see how the pins hold in it, how it does with water and all that good stuff right now. Just finished blocking this project you see. It's actually going to be in the shop in a little while. It's like a chevron cabled cowl, right now it's just a flat piece, but you'll see it in its finished state if you check out the shop. Other than that, I'm really liking the block and roll mat for its grid lines because it's a lot easier to line up and get straight edges. So, the other mat, without its grid lines, you kind of have to eyeball it or get out a yardstick, and that's not very fun, so I'm liking this a lot. The pins went into it very easily. The water seems to be doing fine on it. I'll check it out after it's done, make sure it doesn't have any kind of weird smell or anything afterwards. So I'm going to let this dry out and then we'll check it out. Okay, my projects all finished drying out. A couple things that I didn't realize that I like so much about having a one piece blocking mat was that I can move it so it's laying on the floor in our kind of rec room area and if the kids want to come in I can just pull the whole thing off to the side or move it to a whole completely different room if I want to so I really like the fact that I can do that with this item the interlocking mats is a little bit more difficult to do that Um, I love how easy it was to lay it out and get ready and block and be done with it. So I'm really liking that. I'm going to pull this off and look at the surface of it to see if there's any kind of like pinholes or anything and see if it's self-healing. So let me do that and we'll check it out. Okay, I pulled the project off and went ahead and checked out the surface, and you can see some of where the pins were, but it's nothing dramatic, so it's not that bad. I'm not sure how well, like, after many, many blockings, if I'm going to have, like, pin holes everywhere, and it may not want to stick as well, but only time will tell with that. But I like the fact of this Portability and its storage capacity because you just roll it up and put it out of the way. It also folds up if you need to. That's how it was shipped to me. It was actually folded and not rolled so it's it's very easy to use, very easy to transport. I like the fact that it is nice and grippy on the bottom with the black foam because it doesn't move around when I'm trying to block so that's another positive thing about it. It's a little bit more expensive than the interlocking foam mats. I think those were around like $30 US and this was like $55, but I do think I'll be using this a lot, so I think it was a good investment. If you guys have one of these, let me know what you think. If you've used it for a while, let me know how it's holding up. Leave it in the comments below and thank you for watching.