There is an art to knowing when you are done with a project. Sometimes you can see it coming a mile away, and sometimes it sneaks up on you, as it did today when I resumed work on the multicolor crochet rug.

In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to have to dive into my bin of yarns and find a suitable blue to bring out the turquoise color of the interior of my new bookcase, but then, I crocheted a round of a color called “lotus pink,” and when I put the rug on the floor in front of the bookcase to see how it looked, I could see that it was essentially done:

I had thought that the rug would be larger, that there would be more rounds, that it would be another couple of weeks before it was done, but when I saw the rug in front of the bookcase after I had set it down, I could see I had reached a point at which the size and proportion, along with the colors of the rug, were all working together, and I needed to leave well enough alone.

So I did.

Mostly.

There was one last bit of tidying up I needed to do before weaving in the ends; I needed to crochet an edge, and I quickly settled on a half double slip stitch.

The half double slip stitch is one that creates a finish similar to that of a crab stitch, but it is easier to do. So working with the wrong side of the now nearly finished rug facing me, I made a yarn over, inserted the hook through both loops, made another yarn over, and then pulled that through to the wrong side, and then through all three loops on my hook. The result was a quietly textured edge:

I did this all the way around, working three of these half double slip stitches into each corner, and soon, it was all done but the weaving in of ends and blocking:

There is still some work to be done. Ends must be woven in, resulting tails must be trimmed, and the final piece blocked, but the most important thing I learned from this project is that knowing when you are done, means you have to pay attention, one stitch at a time.