Easy as pie, sort of

I'm working on a blanket for my granddaughter, something with bright primary colors that might be finished by the time she goes to college. The pattern is "Easy as Pie" and, once you get past a practice square, it is fairly easy.

It is also rather clever. You knit the radii of the circles, making increases to fill in the space between the radii, then recapture those increases to keep from wandering off into who-knows-what kind of rainbow spiral. It's those increases that have been a puzzlement.

The pattern says to "Use the left needle to pick up left leg of the purl stitch below the last stitch on the right needle. Knit into the back leg of this stitch." Not understanding this at all, I simply did a M1 instead, but the results were a bit bumpy.

On the next square, I made more of an effort to follow the instructions, but I am not seeing the difference between those instructions and simply knitting through the front and back of that last stitch. I don't know if what I am doing is correct, but the result is much smoother.

Whatever. I'm going to stick with the latter method and forge ahead.

The lever knitting is getting better. Stephanie said practicing ten minutes a day for 30 days would be enough to create the muscle memory to transition to this new way to knit, but she did not take into account how difficult it is to teach an old dog new tricks. I have been at it for 100% of my knitting time since Thanksgiving weekend and am finally getting comfortable with it. There for a while, it was such a struggle I didn't even want to pick up the needles. Even now, I can be cruising along, and yet hit a wrenching road bump the next day, the next hour, even the next row. It gets better every day, though. My knitting mojo is back.