At the end of December I posted about my Travelling Roses the Sequel, that curled into a little tube and broke my heart. At the time, Dephal (who was the recipient of the original scarf) left a comment that hers didn't do that, to my great relief! I also posted about the scarf on the Knit List, and received a few helpful suggestions. The most thorough response I received was from Joan Schrouder, who is single reason I stay subscribed to the list. 

Before I go on to Joan's advice, I want to say a few words about the list, and her in particular. I first joined the Knit List about a year ago, around the same time I discovered knit blogs and the wealth of information available online that I was missing out on. After a while, I found it difficult to keep up with the volume of mail generated on the list, and I started to slip behind on my reading. So I switched to the digest format, which made it a bit more manageable. Now I can just scan through the digests and only read a selected posts. But I always read responses to problems written by Joan. The woman is a genius. I seriously don't think there's anything knitting related that she hasn't tried. Mr. Google tells me that she teaches a lot of knitting workshops – I hope to have the chance to take a class from her some day.

So, when I had my little(!) curling problem, I wrote to the Knit List in hopes that Joan would weigh in on my problem. And that she did. So completely, in fact, that I wrote her and asked her permission to reproduce her answer. So, with permission, here is Joan's response to my problem:

First, get your scarf thoroughly wet. That means putting a bit of
sudsing agent into the water to break down the surface tension.
Submerge it and squish the water through. Rinse and roll in towels
or spin out in a washing machine.

You can improve the drape and hand by stretching them out during the
drying process. I like to use blocking wires as it's easier to
thread them up the sides than to pin out every quarter inch or so to
prevent a scalloped edge. Then spread the wires as far apart as you
can, making the fabric taut and pin out. Leave until thoroughly dry.

Now Leanne did use blocking wires, but I couldn't tell from the blog
how much they were stretched during the drying, so that could be
something to remedy.

If that still doesn't cure the problem, then a heavy steaming is your
remaining recourse. That will flatten out the sts considerably, but
that usually doesn't matter much with lace.

In the future make sure that scarves are knitted at a looser gauge as
that improves the drape and minimizes curling.

Another option is to make the lace garter-based. That means knitting
all the wrong side row sts. Now ordinarily garter would obscure the
lace but a stretch-blocking will flatten out the garter quite a bit
so that it doesn't interfere with the patt looks, yet keeps it from
curling. Most of the ethnic shawls are knit this way – Shetland,
Faroese and Orenburg, so there is historic precedent for using it as
well as practicality.

Alternately make the garter borders wider. To prevent a vertical
line separating the garter from the stockinette center patt, vary the
# of sts that are garter. One could follow the ogee-like shape of
the outermost complete motifs and keep all sts outside of this in
garter. That means that instead of having half motifs at each side,
those portions are also kept in garter. Same thing at the top and
bottom.

My first step was to try re-blocking it, as I suspected (hoped?)  that my problem was simply that I hadn't blocked aggressively enough. This had been my first time blocking with wires. And instead of blocking lace on the bed as I usually do, I had used a blanket on the floor. Although this resulted in not hearing "Why does the bedroom smell like a wet llama?" (It's alpaca, silly), it did mean that I couldn't pin quite as aggressively as I normally would. 

I re-blocked, and pulled those wires apart as far as I possibly could (on a piece of foam, so I could pin easily)

When I unpinned it, this seemed to do the trick. It was certainly more open than it had been. I wore it around the house for a while, to see what would happen. It has a bit of curve to it, but in a nice drapey way – not in a "I'm turning into a tube whether you like it or not" way. I tried to get a picture of it on me, but with could get one I was happy with (the problem was with the model, not the scarf!) Here it is modelled by a lamp.

I have now worn it a couple of times to work, and still no coiling. Yippee! It was bad blocking after all. Whew! 

I still may try Joan's other suggestion of knitting it as a garter stitch base instead of a stockinette stitch base (knitting the wrong side row stitches instead of purling them), to see how it looks. I plan to make at least one more of these, so I will try that for a couple of repeats, block it to see how I like it, and then either continue like that or rip it out and start over. 

Meanwhile, if you make this, be sure to block the bejesus out of it.