The magic of blocking

I finished a big green project: the wavy lace shawl from a Vogue pattern book in the library (alas, I don't know it's title - I copied the pages to keep the pattern).  It turns out to have interesting rippled edges.  Here's how it looks right off the needles:

You can see the rippled edges, but the lace pattern is squashed together and the edges roll under when you aren't looking at them.  I have a zillion other things to do, but I really felt the need to block this bad boy and get it done.  I cleared floor space and put together a 2 x 3 grid of 2' square foam pads to hold it, and hoped it would be long enough, because that's pretty much all the floor space I could find.  I filled a bowl with water, dunked it in and squeezed out the air and left it to soak while I went to pick up pills for my weird nervous kitty.  Squeezing out the water from something this big was a challenge, so it's wetter than I usually leave blocked things, but it should dry before it gets moldy.  I pinned it out, using blocking wires to capture the outermost stitches of each edge curve and to hold the straight edges at the end.  And voila:

When it's dry, it will spring back some, but for the most part it will keep its shape and not curl under.  Then I'll weave in the ends and fold it and put it away for the fundraiser.  It was fun, although a little tricky doing the first end section - if you lose stitches, it doesn't look anything like it does in that picture just above.  That was cause for some ripping back and some swearing, and I can still see a one-row difference, but I'm not going to point it out.

I still have more than 2 skeins left.  Time to hunt for a new pattern.