I started my great granny square in September of 2009 as part of a general house cleaning project.

I had emptied out the part of my house known as “the yarn annex” in an attempt to catalog and organize the contents in such a way as to render them useful and eliminate my tendency to buy more of something I already had because I could not find it.

In the process, I removed a gargantuan tangle of yarn and pieces of long abandoned projects that my then 11, almost 12-year-old, referred to as the “yarn slug.” It was huge, it was unwieldy, and on more than on occasion, I resisted the temptation to simply haul the entire fiber mass to the trash an start my life anew.

It was the kind of problem my mother would solve with scissors, but I am much more inclined to untangle such a clump. There might be, I reasoned, something that I or someone else could use if I could just get it undone, and for the most part, I managed to do just that.

I salvaged any number of skeins of yarn that had several yards caught in the tangle but were otherwise fine. I reclaimed several projects that I have since gone on to finish, and I also amassed a sizable number of scraps of assorted and varying sizes. After giving it some thought, I realized that the only project that would work for me and my scraps was a granny square. It could accommodate any size scrap from a short bit to several yards, everything would fit, and it would always be in one piece.

Since that fateful day in September of 2009, I have continued to add to the square in an effort to keep my scraps under control. My method is to add to it for a period of time, and to then weave in ends. I don’t weave in the ends of the last two rounds at any given moment as I want to be able to pull it out should I find an error I can’t live with.

Yesterday, while I was on a flight and most of the travelers around me were engrossed in the game between the New York Jets and the New England Patriots , I got out my great granny square and began weaving in the many dozens of ends that (while having a festive air) would (if left as they were) allow the project to unravel.

Here is what it looked like before I went after it with my magic Clover bent-tipped needle:

And here is what it looked like after the magic had happened:

The square has grown large enough now that I am beginning to consider what will come next.