Flying by the seat of my pants

So, the Russian Adventure Blanket is getting along nicely. I spent most of the weekend working on it. I knit up the circular pieces last week, after tweaking the pattern suggestions to knit them in the round because seaming all those circles sounded a little nuts to me. (Seriously, the pattern was written to knit them flat, with terms like "wrong side".) I also had to play a bit with needle size since I knit tighter in the round than I do back and forth.

I still have yarn left from my original purchase and the small three-skein purchase I made this summer. But I ran out of some colors and ran low on others and finally took a guess at what I want to do for the border and ordered some more yarn last week that arrived yesterday. I have no real idea if it will be enough or way too much or what. I'm flying by the seat of my pants on this. This blanket is definitely an adventure.

As you can see above, I have joined the four blocks of nine shells each into two sets of two. I have not yet decided how to do the joining of the two halves. I can either use one color all the way up or do two different colors and meet in the middle. I'm leaning toward the two color method. I'm sure I can figure out how to get it all to meet right in the center. Somehow.

Once I get all the circles on and get the two halves joined, I just need to put on a border. this is the sketchiest part of the "pattern". There isn't a lot of guidance, but in the words of Tim Gunn, I will just have to "make it work"...and I'll figure something out.

The circles were blocked before putting them on, but the join has not been blocked. So they look a little wonky and wavy. I'm assuming those waves will work themselves out the way they did in the four main pieces.

What is blocking? Non-knitters may not know. It's when you wet your project and lay it out to dry. Some pieces need to be pinned into place...shaping the fibers specifically where you want them, stretching them out to show the stitch pattern or obtain specific measurements. For other items, you just lay it flat and sort of shape it and let it dry without pins. I am not pinning the blanket out...just shaping it flat and letting it dry. Each of the circles was roughly shaped into a 6 inch circle. That's a queen sized bed the blanket is resting on now.