Just finished a giant granny square for the foot of my bed and my arms know about it

I made one of these last winter out of leftover worsted acrylic held double with a 10mm hook, and it ended up around 48 inches before I ran out of steam. The lap situation is real. Mine got so heavy by the halfway point that I ended up sitting on the floor with it spread out in front of me like I was frosting a cake, just working around the edge from the outside in a circle. Saved my shoulders completely.

The corner tension thing matches what happened to me too. Mine cupped badly for the first six rounds until I finally counted my corner stitches and realized I was yanking the chain spaces tight without noticing. Slowing down on just those four spots fixed most of it. I also stopped weaving in ends as I went, wich I know some people hate, but doing them all during a movie marathon at the end was way less annoying to me than stopping every color change. One thing that helped with the wrist was switching which hand I hook with for a round or two. I'm slow and clumsy crocheting left-handed, but it let the sore wrist rest without stopping completely. By the time my left hand got tired the right one had recovered enough to swap back. Mine lives on the couch now and my dog sleeps on it every single night, so I feel you on the pet claiming it before it was even finished.

I tried the one-big-square route last summer with cotton for a picnic blanket and gave up around round twelve. The heat was part of it, but honestly the bigger problem was that a single square grows so slow at the edges. Each round gets longer than the last, so my hour of evening crochet was producing less and less visible progress. That killed my motivation faster than anything else I've made.

What worked better for me was the opposite structure: a bunch of regular sized squares, maybe ten inches each, joined as I went. Same overall look from a distance, same color striping if you plan it, but every square is a finished little win and it lives in a project bag instead of pooled over my whole lap. I coud take three squares to my kid's soccer practice and actually finish somethig.

Joining did take some trial and error. I got the best results slip stitching thru the back loops so the seams sit flat and you get that nice ridged line between blocks. My join-as-you-go corners still come out a touch wonky on the last side of each square, but blocking fixed most of it.

If I ever do attempt a proper giant one again I'm sticking with acrylic so I can throw it in the wash, because the cotton one attracts every crumb within a five foot radius.

I mostly knit so forgive me if this is a dumb question, but I've been wanting to try crochet for something like this. When you say center-out, does the whole thing stay one piece from the very first round? With knitting I'd be sewing panels togather at the end and dreading it. Also curious how many skeins of the bulky stuff you went through, since I have a bag of it sitting here from a hat project that went wrong and this might be a good way to use it up. The cat thing tracks too, mine sits on anything I'm working on before it's even off the needles.

To the knitter upthread asking about center-out, yes, it stays one piece the whole way. You start with a little ring of chains or a magic circle, work the first round into it, and every round after just builds outward. No seaming, no finishing drama. We were doing it that way back when patterns came off photocopied library pages.

My own trick for the big ones, learned the hard way in the 90s: work the last few rounds in the round rather than turning the whole square each time. Saves the flipping and the shoulders. And count your corner chains every single round, even when you're sure you know better.