Joyous Square aka Cross-eyed Square

It's pretty obvious just looking at the picture in the book that this is not going to be some mindless project that you can do in your sleep.  It's tagged as an "Intermediate" pattern.  I'm going to say that it's not hard at all... once you figure out what you are doing.  The pattern is a beast to read.  You're crossing over rounds and the technical directions are crazy.  As you go on, the directions for each seem to get longer and longer and it's really easy to get lost.  It's just so detailed.  The first 4 rounds are easy.  Round 5 is where you go cross-eyed, which, since you are making a cross is kind of appropriate.  But then you get to Round 8 and it's easy-peasy again.  Here is my finished square:

Not loving the color combo here.

I would probably stick with the colors in the pattern, myself.  But I was just using what I had.... and it was Caron Simply Soft instead of the suggested Red Heart.  The only issue with that was that the chains I made for the green X in the middle were too long... they're pulled tight from the back for the picture, but I would have to adjust the length of the chain if I were to use Caron for the real afghan.  It never says how big your finished square should be, just the first 2 rows.  But the finished afghan is supposed to be 48" wide with 5 squares across, so I'm going to go with approximately 9 inches.  My square is 7", using thinner yarn and smaller hook.  It took me about 2 hours, total.

I would say that it's a pretty intimidating pattern jumping in, but once you get the hang of what's going on, you could probably do it in your sleep after the first few squares.  But it's impressive-looking, for sure.