Pom Poms & Finesse

I finally got a chance to make some of the projects from that pom pom book I posted about last week.  Even though the book is in Japanese, the directions were easy to follow.  The hardest thing about the projects was the finessing.  For me, finessing is sculpting, molding and manipulating a craft project to look its best.

It occurred to me I've never really talked about this final step in the crafting process.  The truth is, I don't really think about finessing when I do it so the step gets left out.  Once in a while I might mention in a tutorial, "needs a little finessing" but that's as far as it goes.  I guess the best way to explain finessing is with a few pictures of how I made one of the pom poms.  This is not a tutorial.

First I started off with a pom pom maker and wrapped and layered the yarn around the ring.  I added this picture in because I know some of you were curious on how the pom poms were made.  It's basically all done with layering different colored yarns.

Once I cut the yarn off the pom pom, it looked like this.  In most craft books it would say, trim down to an apple shape.  The reality is it's all about trimming and finessing.  When you see that perfect project in a craft book or blog, chances are there was some finessing involved.

Big difference from the last picture, right?  Here's where the finessing comes in.  First I did trim the pom pom down to an apple shape.  But then I realized that where the red and white met on top needed to have more of a widow's peak shape.  Since the white part was receding too much, I had to trim down the white yarn much more than the red. Then I combed the red forward to overlap the white a little.  I also had to trim the white yarn on the sides shorter than the red.   Besides that, the seeds were too big.  I had to cut out quite a few of the brown strands and push the white yarn over some of the brown yarn.  While I was doing all this trimming, the white yarn was getting all over the red yarn and I had to keep picking it out.

Any time I follow a craft tutorial I assume there will be finessing involved and make adjustments accordingly.  Curious, do you strictly follow the directions or do you modify the project as needed?