It was a week ago today that, according to NOAA, “Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy made landfall at 8pm ET … about 5 miles southwest of Atlantic City, NJ,” and as the before and after pictures attest, in what amounted to the blink of any eye, Sandy leveled miles and miles of what had been people’s homes and livelihoods, scattering their belongings in the storm’s wake

But even before Sandy made landfall and wrecked havoc, I knew that it was just a matter of time until crafters would attempt to harness the empowering and healing nature of their various craft vocations in the service of providing succor and aid to the survivors of last Monday’s storm, and such was the case yesterday when a friend of mine tagged me at Facebook with a request for two (or more) six-inch granny squares to be included in an afghan that would then be raffled off to raise funds for survivors of Rhode Island’s brush with Sandy.

After having spent the last three days putting off even routine cleaning so that I could better focus on my genealogical and fat bag adventures, I spent the largest portion of the day getting caught up, but eventually, my guilt at having let chores pile up was assuaged, and I got out my crochet hooks and set to work making some six-inch granny squares.

In an effort to combine crochet and “cleaning” I used only yarns that I already had out, and I was able to use a long scrap of yellow to make the first two rounds of this square, which I then finished off with three rounds of the variegated CraftSmart Value sangria:

Happy with the way the solid center and the variegated outer rounds had worked out in the above square, I continued in the same vein, using a long scrap of medium thyme for the center of my next granny square, and Red Heart Super Saver cherry coke for the remaining rounds:

Then, determined to bring some order to the myriad scraps that are the result of my efforts at this year’s North Carolina State Fair, I used some of the longer scraps to make this multi-colored granny square:

I’m not absolutely certain this scrap technique works on a granny square that is just five rounds, but, I will make at least three more to get some sense of how they might work together.

I would like to get at least three more squares completed before I pack them up and send them off, and hopefully the efforts of crafters everywhere will bring a sense of normalcy to survivors as they traverse the long road to recovery.