Whenever I work on a crochet piece I feel a combination of dread and excitement as I near the finish.

Excitement that it will be done and I can enjoy what I have accomplished.

Dread that there are so many fussy details to attend to in order to make my piece look it’s best.

This is where I found myself with my recent rendition of the the Road Trip Scarf.

The main body of the scarf was crocheted. As were the flowers. Which were also appliquéd to the scarf with the ends woven in and trimmed.

But there was something missing: the crochet scarf needed to be blocked.

Because it didn’t need a full soak, I sprayed it with plain water, and then pinned it to a blocking board, turned the overhead fan on to speed the drying, and turned my attention to another project in need of some finishing.

Regular readers may remember that a few weeks ago, I was obsessed with making flat granny square bags.

I had hit a bit of a wall deciding what to do about the straps for the bag, but last night I got an idea that just might work, so I decided that I needed to return to this series of bags.

I started with the bag based on the Better Homes & Gardens C-1 square.

There were some ends that needed weaving in:

So I got out my bent-tipped yarn needle and did exactly that:

Then, because I have pets who shed copious amounts of pet hair, I used a lint roller to get as much of it off the squares as I could before blocking them.

After a good soak and a thorough wringing out by being rolled between towels, I pinned the squares in place on two of a ten-square set of blocking tiles:

While I was doing all of that, the road trip scarf had dried, so I took the tassels I made yesterday:

and put them on the let and right corners of the scarf:

which is now ready to wear and ready for adventure:

Doing the finishing work of a project is not always as much fun or as satisfying as the actual crocheting is, but whenever possible, I take the few extra minutes needed to complete the finishing touches that make my crochet look as spectacular as it intrinsically is.

Related: In which I begin to climb out of the rabbit hole
Accessories for Accessories
A busy crochet weekend