Member-only story
FREE CROCHET PATTERN
A Great Granny Square Blanket Crochet Tutorial
In thirty-six easy steps

Where it all began
In April of 2014, I experienced some turbulence in my personal life. My mother sought to remedy this disturbance by volunteering me to make a crochet blanket for the as-yet-to-be-born baby of one of her neighbors, and while I appreciated the fact that she was finding me distractions, I was actually up to my eyeballs in crochet projects, and I didn’t really need another one.
Until I did.
February 16, 2017
I was waiting for a crochet strap I had soaked in water to dry, and there was nothing I could do to finish what was my then current project until the drying was done.
Like a pot of water set on the stove to boil, a piece of wet crochet dries more slowly if you are watching, so while I waited for the strap to dry, I moved on to what was next, and finally — after a nearly three-year delay — what was next was the crochet blanket for my mother’s formerly pregnant neighbor whose baby who was now a toddler.
The three rules I set for myself
As usual, I set some rules for myself:
- One: I could only use yarn from my stash
- Two: I could only use yarn from my stash
- Three: I could only use yarn from my stash
You might wonder why I had to list the same rule three times, and the reason is this:
I am always on quest for “the perfect color”
and because of this predilection to set off on color quests, I have amassed a huge selection of yarns in just about any color you could think of — a collection so large and unruly, I often dn’t even know what I have — and I knew that despite what I might come to believe, the truth was, I had enough yarn to make this project without buying any more.
Armed with a hook, a selection of yarns that tended toward what I think of as a “flamingo” palette, and a crochet tension regulator, I got a start on the now toddler’s baby blanket. Before the afternoon was over, the strap was dry, and I had finished the first three…