diff --git a/test/test_blob.py b/test/test_blob.py
index 532ddae..86608cc 100644
--- a/test/test_blob.py
+++ b/test/test_blob.py
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ from . import utils
 __author__ = 'dborowitz@google.com (Dave Borowitz)'
 
 BLOB_SHA = 'af431f20fc541ed6d5afede3e2dc7160f6f01f16'
-BLOB_NEW_CONTENT = 'foo bar\n'
+BLOB_NEW_CONTENT = b'foo bar\n'
 
 
 class BlobTest(utils.BareRepoTestCase):
@@ -67,7 +67,7 @@ class BlobTest(utils.BareRepoTestCase):
         )
 
         self.assertEqual(BLOB_NEW_CONTENT, blob.data)
-        self.assertEqual(BLOB_NEW_CONTENT.decode('ascii'), blob.read_raw())
+        self.assertEqual(BLOB_NEW_CONTENT, blob.read_raw())
 
 
 if __name__ == '__main__':
diff --git a/test/utils.py b/test/utils.py
index c956b24..8219beb 100644
--- a/test/utils.py
+++ b/test/utils.py
@@ -52,13 +52,12 @@ def oid_to_hex(oid):
     return b2a_hex(oid).decode('ascii')
 
 def gen_blob_sha1(data):
-    m = hashlib.sha1()
-
     # http://stackoverflow.com/questions/552659/assigning-git-sha1s-without-git
-    git_sha1_format = 'blob %d\0%s' % (len(data), data)
-    m.update(git_sha1_format)
+    m = hashlib.sha1()
+    m.update(('blob %d\0' % len(data)).encode())
+    m.update(data)
 
-    return m.hexdigest().decode('ascii')
+    return m.hexdigest()
 
 def rmtree(path):
     """In Windows a read-only file cannot be removed, and shutil.rmtree fails.