108F by our thermometer, 104 in our zip code per Wunderground today.

And I was sitting there with pounds of wool, super grateful for power and for air conditioning and not running anything I didn’t have to to avoid stressing the grid.

When we left on our trip, I had set up the barn with its first row and six strands on the needle. It was a sleep-deprived trip leaving early and coming home late, and when I picked the afghan back up the next row was a wrong side row and I was too fuzzy-brained to think, wait. Turn it around and take a good look first.

I didn’t need to; I knew what I was doing, right? It was ready, just go.

Which is how I went merrily on my way without knitting the vertical bars at the sides of that big barn door. It hit me today as I finished that part just why it vaguely reminded me of a Union Jack. Oops.

If you look at the top right you’ll see the lonely little remnant stitch from my trying to duplicate-stitch (ie embroidering it on after the fact) my way out of that problem. Clumsy looking. Out. I still have lengths of white yarn at the top to work with but that attempt wasn’t it.

Maybe I’ll try a crochet hook next.

Somehow working from the bottom up feels easier. But then the extra ends.

How would you do this?