Despite trying a new sleep schedule

and I am, accordingly, exhausted, I have been more productive today than I was all the rest of the weekend. I read most of two articles, finally figured out the pattern problem with the lace shrug I was making, finished knitting it, grafted the seam and blocked it. I gave The Sweater a long-overdue wash and re-blocking, changed my sheets, did a load of laundry, had a Peer Counselor interview and bought groceries. I also watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica, made a swatch, cast on and knit half the hem for my mother's Dead Elmo Vest. (A few of these things will be detailed at length below.)

Here we have a picture of the lace shrug, hot off the needles and ripply and ugly and too small:











And here is a cuff, unblocked:











Blocking: the lace shrug and The Sweater; the silver thing is a ruler, for scale.











The same cuff, blocking:











I might add that the lace is considerably larger now that it's blocking (and will be once it's finished), due to lace's tendency to streeeeeeetch. I re-blocked The Sweater, not because I felt it had been too long since the last time my room smelled of wet dog, but because, despite the fact that it hadn't done this immediately after its first blocking, the edges had begun to roll and the first blocking, it seems, stretched the neckline enough that the sleeves like to slide off my shoulders. I've often seen knitted items blocked to make them larger, but I've never seen a blocking that made something smaller, so here's hoping this works.

Meanwhile, I'm knitting a new vest for my mother. This is a belated birthday/Christmas present. I got the yarn in the mail a week or so ago, but, due to my firm resolve to finish what I had started first, I made myself wait until the lace shrug was finished. The yarn is soft and furry, and it's primarily red, with some black thrown in. The red furriness inspired the likeness to Elmo, though I suppose the black means it's Elmo, but he fell in a tar pit.