Of late, I have been able to put off things that must be done so that I can concentrate on things that are of greater interest to me, but yesterday, all of those chickens came home to roost, and I could put them off no longer.

Some of them were ordinary. I was out of eggs, milk, and potato chips.

Some of them were less ordinary. My youngest son was finally had a break in his schedule and had time to get a hair cut, the laundry had reached critical mass, and it was now more inconvenient to work around it than to wash it, and my husband agreed to let me help him with the logistics of his rather complicated day.

Every moment was accounted for, and getting everything done that needed doing required not only that nothing go wrong, but that everything go right.

Which it did.

So today, when I was thinking about what I would work on, I decided to focus on some finishing work, all of which required a needle and scissors.

First up were these four two-round granny squares in need of joining:

Last week I misplaced one of the squares and had to wait several days for it to turn up, so I decided that getting them whipstitched together into one larger, harder to misplace square was a high priority.

Using the generous tails I had left and a bent-tipped yarn needle, I put the right sides of the squares together and after threading the needle I had at hand, I worked under both loops of the crochet stitches and anchored two corresponding chain-one corners with a whipstitch, then continuing in that fashion I moved along the edge until I reached the next chain-one corner.

I did this four times, and in short order the newer, larger, and hopefully harder to lose square was joined:

Looking back into my bag of things that needed doing, I found these two “Day of the Dead” granny squares:

I made these back in late October and early November. The one on the left was crocheted with a 4.5 mm hook, while the one on the right was crocheted with a 4.0 mm hook. Like the crochet pattern I intended to write, the squares were not yet finished, so using a smaller yarn needle and some four-ply Red Heart Super Saver yarn that I split into two strands of two-ply yarn, I embroidered the two squares:

Now with the needlework done, I can again pull out my hooks and put the finishing crochet touches to these three squares, working as I always do — one stitch at a time.