Great American Afghan Update

I'm almost halfway finished with my squares. Of course, I'm behind schedule if I want to finish and ship this for Christmas. I have nine weeks to knit 14 squares, sew them together, and finish. Hmmm....

Anyway, here's my progress so far.

Square 1
Square 2
Square 3
Square 4
Square 5
Square 7
Square 8
Square 9
Square 10
Square 11
Square 12

I'm not knitting square 6 as written because I don't want to add the needlework; the stitches would require lots of running thread across the back or lots of weaving-in of lots of ends. Not very knitterly.

Here's a swatch of what I'm substituting for square 6:


I can't decide if I'm going to knit square 13 as written either. Again, there's already too much going on in terms of having to add things to these blocks after I'm finished knitting them (see blocks 1, 4, 15, in addition to 6 and 13).

The cool thing about this project is that so far, with the exception of block 11 (the cat), every block has included a technique and/or stitch that I've not ever done before (block 12 was my first experience with entrelac). It's been a good learning experience.