My maternal grandmother, while not stern or severe, was a no nonsense woman, and everything she owned or did had a purpose.

As I child, it made indoor play a bit of a challenge.

While I was allowed to bring a few toys to her house during my summer stays, my indoor play adventures primary consisted of creating elaborate narratives for my small collection of Russ Troll dolls with the aid of an artificial geranium I was allowed to use for my imagineering.

Otherwise, I spent most of the summer outdoors, which is where my grandmother believed children belonged.

My current rehab crochet squares adventures have given me a new perspective on my grandmother’s ruthless pursuit of purposefulness, and she is often at the forefront of my thoughts as I transform the bits and pieces I have accumulated over the years into crochet squares that can be used by others.

The first piece I rehabbed was a purple circle I crocheted for my 2006 North Carolina State Fair entry. It was one of the extras from that project that I found when I going through a pile of crochet pieces in my crochet empire. All it needed was some squaring off, and so I did.

Using Craft Smart Yarn sangria, I very quickly had the circle squared off and measuring five-inches across:

Happy that a random bit had been transformed into crochet square with purpose, I kept going with the sangria and tricked out a monochrome four-patch of two-round granny squares with a contrasting edge and a crochet rosette in the center:

I was on a roll of purposeful crochet, but the next square up was a four-round granny square that I was not able to put to use in my as yet to be completed 2015-2017 state fair project, so I switched colors and began working with Red Heart Super Saver shocking pink.

In short order, I had bordered it with a round of half double crochet stitches, and the orphaned square was rehabbed and ready to be a part of something larger than itself:

With the pink in hand I then tackled a bright yellow square that proved to be problematic.

It was just wide enough that a single crochet all the way around was too much. It was just narrow enough that a slip stitch all the way around was insufficient, but — after several missteps — I found that a single crochet worked through the back bar just below the back loop was just right:

As I work my way through the mountains of orphaned crochet pieces I have, I hope that in doing so I learn some valuable lesson that I can apply to some other part of my life, and in the meantime, I will move through the mountain, one stitch at a time.