Knife project, this should be basic but isn't working

Well I’m running into a dummy dead end and I can’t figure out why. I’m trying to knife project a grid onto a circle shape, followed all the steps I normally do but today it’s not working…

select the grid, then shift select the circle that I want it to project onto…

go to orthographic top view (7)

tab into edit mode

select knife project from the Mesh dropdown menu…

right?

but the circle object doesn’t have the grid lines when I look at it by itself.

please set me straight. it’s a losing my mind day today, lost an hour on this already.

remove the faces on the plane

happy bl

Aaaaaand yahtzee

Cheers Ricky, that would be the dummy dead end award for me, thank you