Using worsted weight yarn instead of DK, so US7 needles instead of US6.

Didn’t know how to do a LLI (left-leaning lift increase) so I did a M1 instead. Results looks bumpy.

Then I tried doing a KFB (knit front and back) for the increase. Looks fine in the circle because a subsequent K2tog pulls things together, but in the square around the circle, K2tog leaves holes.

So I finally looked up how to do LLI:
http://www.knotions.com/techniques/increases/how_to_knit_...

Re the grafting: I thought I was doing it wrong, but my stitches were just too tight. For directions on how to graft reverse garter, see: http://www.leethalknits.com/tutorials/grafting.html

Decided to complete all the circles first. I had enough yarn to do 16, so the blanket will be 4x4 instead of 3x3. Six of the circles have been squared.

Working on squaring the circles. Because the yarn for the circles is a different brand than the yarn for the squaring, I worried about whether the squaring would be too tight for the pieces to lay flat. So today (Feb. 23) I gave a finished square a soak and block. No worries - very square.

I let a lot of time lag on this project, could not remember if I had already switched to Irish cottage knitting when I started it (blog was of little help). It looks like I had switched, but had not yet learned to go up a needle, so the knitting is a bit tight. Again, the blocking of one square reassured me that all will be well in the end. (Fingers crossed!)

Another note: when I picked up this project again, I noticed that the instructions for slipping a stitch say to slip KNITWISE. I don’t think I did this at all so far. :-( But I will now.

Mar 3, 2015 - FINISHED SQUARING THE CIRCLES!

I decided to resquare some of the earlier circles, and the first one I picked is FUBAR. I didn’t discover this until I was nearly done squaring it again. sigh

Mar 27 - NOW all the circles are squared AND the ends are woven in.

Sep 21 - Decided to replace the FUBAR square.

October - putting together the blocks into strips - 48 stitches per side, including each corner (the pattern does not say to slip the first stitch, but later counts each supposedly slipped stitch when combining the strips; I slipped as if to purl)

November - combining the strips, 48 stitches per side, 7 stitches across joins (the slipped stitches are a bit loose, so on next knit row I knit through the back to tighten them up a bit)

January 23, 2016 - FINALLY all the strips are attached. All that remains is the edging and weaving in a bazillion ends.

Feb 4, 2016 - working on the edging. One circ is not enough, tried working the edging with two, but broke down and bought a third circ. An alternative would have been to knit each side separately, then grafted the corners together; then I could have skipped the purling as well.

Feb 8, 2016 - Bound off using suspended bind off.

Feb 9, 2016 - wove in ends, blocked. DONE!!!