Blocking Uneven Ribbing

Knitting nice uniform, even-looking, ribbing is a big challenge for me.  I realize it has to do with the varying tension of my knits and purls when ribbing back and forth.  With less elastic yarns, such as silk and cotton, I find it difficult to get uniform ribbing even when ribbing in the round.  

At the moment, my best option is to fix the ribbing during wet-blocking.  I thought I’d share my method here as I've often searched the internet for help on this topic, but the popular solutions like combination knitting don't seem to solve the problem for me.  

Awhile back I knit the Lesley pullover from Hannah Fettig’s Home and Away book.  The yarn I used is a wool/silk blend knit in a loose gauge.

Notice that there is a fair quantity of ribbing and it looks relatively uniform in the final photo.  It wasn’t always like that….

Here is what it looked like, straight from the needles:

To wet block, I soaked the sweater for 15 minutes in water with a drop of Eucalan.  I then rolled up the sweater in a towel, and kneeled on the roll, to press out any excess water.

Immediately after unrolling the towel, I went to work on the ribbing.  This may seem like sacrilege – but I pull lengthwise on all the columns of knits and purls, until they look straight – and I let it dry like that.

Pulled on the neck ribbing…

Pulled on the sleeve ribbing….

And pulled on the bottom ribbing…. ALL the way around…

I then leave the whole sweater to dry flat with a fan blowing over it.  Once dry, the ribbing looks acceptable – I always still feel like it could be neater, but it's still much improved.

Let me know if you have a method that works for you, as I'm always interested in alternatives!