It Shouldn't Be Smiling

Well, it didn't work out quite how I imagined.  Here is current progress:

I thought I could just keep knitting on either side, and the circular sides would stack nicely, making a straight edge at the top and bottom. Instead, my knitting is smiling at me.

Now what do I do? How do I use what I already have? (Well, that's why I call it Conditional Knitting.)

What I finally decided was to try to fill in these areas and then start knitting around the entire piece. Instead of making this piece into a rectangular oblong, the final piece will be circular.

At least, that's the current theory and hope.

Here is what I'm doing.

I picked up along the part that was essentially straight (it turned out to be 36 stitches at my gauge), and then I'm knitting one from the side each time I get there. Since I have three stripes of eight stitches to fill in, I will add 24 stitches on either side. By my count, I will have a few stitches over 400 for the final entire circle, so 8 segments of 50 stitches, give or take a few, and then I'll continue the normal circle increase of 8 stitches in every other round.

Again, in theory. Here is another picture of the middle, which I really like. Let's end on a happy note.