The days are getting longer, and as far as I am concerned, this change comes not a moment too soon.

With so much to pack into what feel like rather short days, I find that every extra minute helps, and today sunset was not one minute later, it was two, and I put all 120 seconds to use.

The first order of business was to document two new-since-I-last-wrote-a-blog-post granny squares for my own personal Roseanne Reboot granny square afghan:

I had done one under artificial light and was not certain how it would look, but apparently the reference crochet pieces I used to guide me did the trick and even in the late light of the too-early (for me anyway) sunset, the color choices still held up.

These two squares, however, have to work not only with each other, but they have to play nicely with all of the other squares, so I laid out all of the squares I had made so far:

and I am happy enough with all of them to just move forward. Sort of (more about that later).

The only thing left that a crocheter needs to know to move forward with this project is how to join the squares. When I was new to crochet, I was immensely frustrated by directions that read: “whip stitch squares together.”

I prefer to frustrate people with overly detailed instructions.

For the purposes of this afghan, I first made a decision to go with a single crochet stitch to join the squares because it is super durable and if you make a mistake that needs to be addressed, it is much quicker to pull out row of crocheted stitches than it is to undo and equal number of whipstitches.

I started by putting the right sides of two squares together. For the purposes of this tutorial, I used a yarn in a contrasting color so that it is easier to see where the stitches are made.

So with the right sides together, I secure the joining yarn to a 5.0 mm hook (the same size hook that was used to crochet square), and then insert it under both loops of the corresponding chain-1 corners, yarn over, pull through, and then complete the single crochet:

Then I make 22 more single crochet stitches for a total of 23. With one set of squares joined, I do the same thing all over again with a second set of squares which then look like this:

Now that I have two rows of two squares each I’m ready to open them up:

Put their right sides together:

Get out my trusty 5.0 mm hook and another color of yarn for contrast and start putting my hook under both loops of the corresponding stitches and making more single crochet stitches until I have worked my way across the entire length:

And this is how it looks when it is unfolded:

Obviously, when you are using a yarn that matches, you won’t have that contrast, and the joining stitches will fade right into the background.

Now that I have six squares done I am probably about 114 squares away from being able to lay this all out and join them. In the meantime I will work as I always do — one stitch at a time.