To Block or Not to Block? A Question of Blocking

Blocking. It's a basic skill for knitters. Most projects require some level of blocking to look their best. It's part of the judging criteria at the county fair. This is a quote from our fair's submission guidelines, "GENERAL APPEARANCE: Visual impact, presentation, clean, neat & well blocked".  Blocking can really highlight the difference between "Made by Hand" and "Home Made". Unfortunately, like swatching, it's tedious and time consuming. And not much fun. I often want to skip the whole process and get right to the wearing of my newly finished masterpiece. I recently finished a project and thought "Should I block this?". I realized that I had never had a need to block a 100% alpaca item, so I thought I'd do a little research before I jumped in. I found a great blog post by the Yarn Harlot - Walk Around the Block. I love her idea of using a thread to make a straight edge. I've always tended to do the million pin technique :-) I also hadn't thought about handling alpaca and silk more gently than wools. I have always used the same technique for everything. So, how do you block? Or do you not block? I discovered that I can always learn something new, even about something as basic as blocking.