The new crochet rug I just completed has been a big hit with my cat, Stripes, but it left me with this question: now that the rug is being used as a rug, what can I put under my new bookcase that will be attractive and protect the floor? It turns out that the answer to this question is—crochet furniture casters!

The only problem? I had to design them first.

Working from the same bin of yarn that houses the stash I used for the small crochet rug, I switched up my hook. For the rug I had used a 6.0 mm (or J) hook, but for the future casters I used an 8.0 mm (or L) hook. I did this because I wanted to not only crochet the casters, I wanted to felt them.

Using this granny square pattern as my guide, I made nine two-round granny squares and joined them into a three-by-three array:

The square measured 9″ across the center in both directions.

Unwilling to hand felt it, I threw nine-patch square in with other laundry, where the water and agitation did their magic. An hour later the nine patch had shrunk from 9″ to 8″:

I was pleased with how it had turned out and I made a decision to not felt it any further, because it was felted enough to work as a furniture caster, and I liked that the crochet stitching could still be seen.

But the nine-patch of granny squares was never meant to be one of the casters for my book case—I made it to gather the information I needed to properly design and size the casters. So with the felted nine-patch of granny squares transformed into a trivetI got to work on the casters.

Soon I had finished the first round of fourteen two-round granny squares to be:

Now all that is left to do is crochet the fourteen second rounds, weave in the ends, join the squares, weave in the remaining ends, and then felt the future granny square furniture casters, moving forward as I always do—one stitch at a time.