The prayer shawl ministry at our church — I’ve mentioned it before — makes things like shawls, lap robes, and baby blankets that are blessed and then given to people in the hospital, with new babies, and with other pastoral care needs. We also make “prayer squares” which are much smaller, meant to fit easily into a pocket or a purse, used both as a reminder to pray and as a reminder that others are praying for us.

While the larger shawls etc. are distributed by the pastoral care team, the squares sit in a basket at the back of the church and are free for the taking. We restock them as needed, but we also try to have a good surplus in reserve for times when we know a lot of them will get taken: Christmas, Easter, summer camp. So with one just passed and two upcoming, everyone was asked to knit or crochet ten squares over about the next four months. Easy enough.

I started by eking out a few squares from the leavings of some others’ blankets (all of which need to be blocked so that those corners stay down):

Then I realised how profoundly satisfying it is to work on a project that can be knocked out start-to-finish in twenty minutes or less. I found a ball of fluffy purple yarn in the group stash and made some fuzzy squares:

When that yarn was used up, I found a smaller ball of variegated yarn, in a colour scheme that you could variously describe as either “skittles” or “crayon barf” depending on how charitable you’re feeling. I got another nine squares out of that (and again, these will look much better after blocking):

And then I remembered the massive amount of yarn I have left over from my Christmas crocheting. Five colours of yarn in combination yielded ten more squares:

After that it seemed like the perfect time to finally learn how to make granny squares. After several false starts I finally found a tutorial I could follow (YouTube link) and managed to construct something that, though rather wobbly, is still recognizably a granny square (left). My second attempt (right) is closer yet:

And now all I want to do is crochet granny squares all the time. So I have been neglecting my reading to do just that. I seem to have rather overshot the mark in terms of our “ten squares before June” goal… though, somehow, I don’t think the others will mind!