Whether you love them or hate them, the granny square is a staple of crochet.

The most recognized granny square consists of a series of groups of three double crochet stitches that are worked in the round with chain spaces used to define the corners.

Having said that, it turns out that even with those parameters, there are a lot of ways to finally configure a granny square.

To start, you can begin with a chain-4 or chain-5 and then join with a slip stitch to form a ring. Or you can simply chain 4, and then make all of the first round of double crochet stitches into the first chain made with the remaining 3 counting as the first double crochet.

Corners can be a 2-chain space or 3-chain space. There can be a chain-1 space between the 3-double crochet stitch groups, or there can be no space at all.

If you are using the same yarn throughout a square, the transition from one round to another can be made by joining with a slip stitch to the first ch-3 dc of the round and then slip stitching over to the next place that a 3-double crochet stitch group would be placed, or it can be made by making one chain and then making a half-double or single crochet into the first-ch-3 dc of the round depending on whether one is using a 2-chain or 3-chain corner space.

Alternatively, you can change colors every round and make use of even smaller scraps of yarn.

All of these options form the back drop for what is my Great Granny Square which came to be as a result of my attempt to organize the portion of our attic known as “the yarn annex.”

I began my yarn organizing venture in late August of last year by taking everything out of the annex and putting it in the guest room. I have watched countless organizing shows and had convinced myself that the longest this would take would be two hours (although my organizing hero(ine), Hellen Buttigieg, always manages to get things done in just half an hour.)

Since I began crocheting in January of 1998, I had accumulated and collected any number books and yarns and patterns and had in my possession any number of partially completed projects. However, in addition to neatly sorted and carefully bagged yarn and UFOs, I also had two large boxes that contained massive amounts of yarn tangled together with unfinished projects which, once it was removed from the boxes and deposited onto the guest bed, my youngest son dubbed the “yarn slug.”

As it turned out, the project of organizing and destashing the yarn annex so that there was a usable rather than overwhelming space, took several weeks rather than couple of hours. During that time I decided what could stay and what would have to go and spent countless hours wrestling with the yarn slug. Bit by bit, the slug shrank, and eventually it was small enough for me to make tough decisions about what to untangle and what to cut.

In the midst of all that sorting, untangling, and unraveling, I decided the most efficient thing to so with the small scraps was to turn them into one giant granny square. Armed with an H-hook, I began my venture pictured here: