joining grannies

so, i've crocheted myself enough practice grannies. now i find it's time to join them up. again, my lack of ability to follow or understand patterns has caused a bit of chaos. i started off chaining them together, like this. but i was not really happy with the result. the great thing is that i popped over to little lovelies the other day and found that i wasn't the only one joining grannies. at her direction i popped further over to the lovely carina's craftblog for a fabulous tutorial! a-joining-we-will-go...