I began the project known as “the great granny square” in June of 2009.

It was my hope that I would meet two goals:

Eliminate the tangle of project-less partial skeins of yarn that littered my crochet empire

Create an interesting, usable object from the disparate scraps that would otherwise be useless or difficult to place in a project

I had only two rules:

All of the yarn used in the project had to be be genuine scraps
The yarn had to be used as it was and could not be trimmed

My hope was that I would create an elegant object and bring order to my unruly empire, and Saturday, I decided it was time to revisit the great granny square and either weave in the ends and call it done, or move forward.

First I laid it out:

next, I measured it:

and found that it measured 4’8″ across:

Then I measured the bed in my crochet empire/guest room and decided that the finished great granny square would ideally measure 72″ across.

Clearly, I had some work to do, so I got out my 5.0mm hook and some of the many yarn scraps I have gathered together as part of my general organizing effort and got to work.

Just a few minutes after noon today, I measured my progress.

Here is the overview of the granny square:

with this detail showing that I managed to add four inches to the width:

and here is an overview without the measuring tape:

I think that one of the reasons this project has gone so slowly is that while I knew what I wanted to make, I didn’t know what I was making it for, so it was easy to set it aside when a more urgent, better defined project came along.

Hopefully these new parameters (six-foot square granny square for the guest bed in my crochet empire) will help me move along with this UFO, and I will be able (quite literally) to put this project to bed.