Quite some time ago, longer than I care to admit, my husband's Auntie L asked for my advice. She plopped an old bag down in front of me with granny squares of every color made in the mid-1970s! These belonged to her mother, the only crocheter in the family I believe. Could I help her find the pattern? What could she do with them? Could I complete whatever it was?
Promising very little, I took the squares home. In the bag was the second page of a pattern that was clearly NOT where the granny squares came from. They had the smell of forgotten closet storage, they made me sad. I put her bag in my craft room and it sat. And sat. Many months later, Auntie L gently asked me about the squares and I took them out to think. I moved them around on my floor, wondering what I could do. Then I stopped wondering about my dilemma and wondered about the woman who originally made them. This woman was my husband's grandma and the only one I had never met in a vast family of loving and interesting people.
I wondered what type of projects these scraps of yarn came from-- baby blanket and afghan remnants perhaps? Where were her hooks? What did she think? My mind wandered back to my own grandmother, my crochet teacher, and it made me think about her works in progress. What happened to them when she passed? I have blankets that she made, but nothing that was unfinished. How wonderful it would have been for me to finished something of hers!
Since, I do not have unfinished projects from my own family, I looked on this project for my husband's Auntie with renewed energy. I washed the granny squares and plotted an accent color to tie them all together. For the next several months, everywhere I went, the grannies went. I decided to stay true to her pattern, only adding another round to make them large enough for a lapghan. Though I never met the grandma who made these grannies, I feel close to her-- touching her perfect rows of double crochet.
Around and around I crochet, weaving in her ends and adding my own to be weaved in. The yellow granny you see in the photo is the last of the twenty eight 4" squares. I will re-block them next, seam them together and do a few finishing rounds before handing them back to Auntie L as a memento of her mother. Thinking about that day, makes me smile. It's coming soon.