It started as an learning exercise

I hadn't ever crocheted granny squares until latish last year; in fact I hadn't crocheted for so long it was like a past life thing. I had played around a little with cotton and tiny crochet hooks many long years ago and only knew this because I found a couple of unfinished doileys...but couldn't remember how or when I did them or any of the stitches etc , and then when I looked at a crochet pattern it was looking at a foreign language. I had a couple of ideas for my Etsy and decided I needed someone who could knit or crochet to either show me how, or even do it for me. I had nine colors of wool that I really liked and started to play... I made a granny square or 2 using 3 colors then I wondered how many different combinations I could make out of those 9 colors with each square having 3 colors only. I worked out that there were 84 combinations and in each of these, the 3 colors could be in 6 different positions so that added up to 504 squares. So I thought, just for fun, I would try to make them all and just plodded away here and there in little spaces of time throughout the days, weeks etc...and amazingly by Christmas time I had done all 504 of them...I have so frequently started things and not completed them so I seriously surprised myself with getting them all done!!! Now I am going to make it into a blanket...again bit by bit in small snippets of time here and there throughout the days and weeks etc and see when I can finish it.
Yesterday I took the squares over to Mum and Dad's place as they don't have children at home or pets, and I lay all 504 squares out on their lounge-room floor to work out where they should all go. Then my wonderful Mum and I put them back in their box in labeled order ready for me to systematically crochet them together.