The afghan is joined! It’s not done, but I have more to show.
Clue 6 took the 14 hexagon motifs and joined them into two long panels. This was a pain in the tuchus and revealed previously unnoticed stitching errors. Many many yards of yarn were pulled out. I think I managed to get it all worked out, though. I decided not to use black within the panels, largely because I couldn’t determine how to fit it in well.
Clue 8 was assembly and border. Here I did use black, to be the leading of a stained glass window. The joining was mostly “make a strip of grannies and add it to this edge.” I wanted to be clever with the joining and use fewer lengths of yarn, somehow going along the edge of the strip and pulling yarn out to do the granny-to-granny joins midstream, but upon further reflection I didn’t think I could do that without yarn tension mania, so I sucked it up and joined the grannies into strips with separate lengths of yarn. My join was single crochet in the back loops only (I intended to use the method of the flat slip stitch join, but spaced out and did it the usual way, which for sc is okay since it doesn’t roll to the front like sl st), and when I came to a crosswise seam end I slip stitched into it to avoid gaps in the black lines.
I’m not going to attempt a full-afghan photo until it’s actually done, so here are some detail shots of the joins to tide you over.
There are still shaggy ends because I’m not going to do the final clipping until the blanket is completed and washed. I will trim a bit, though, and/or weave the longest of the ends in a bit more so they don’t tangle in the wash.
With the border it will be long enough for the bed, but not quite wide enough (if it only needed to overhang one side instead of both, it would be enough). The next post (January?) will show you how I’m addressing that.