Welcome to My Pity Party

I am happy to report that I am feeling about ten times better this morning than I was at the end of last week. That said, I still haven't tested negative yet, so I'm still isolating from the Mister -- and it meant that I missed family dinners and services for Rosh Hashanah. I did, however, manage to make challah, and as promised, here's a photo:

The braid/weave looked a lot clearer before it was baked, but I'm still pretty happy with how this turned out, given it was the first time I'd ever tried a round loaf. I sent it to dinner with Mo and the Mister on Friday night and then had my sad little dinner alone with no challah. I didn't want to replicate that particular pity party on Saturday, so I baked some more and tried a different method of shaping:

One of these loaves went into the freezer, but I just had a couple of slices of the other for breakfast. Yum!

I spent a lot of the weekend crocheting and watching TV, but yesterday I was feeling well enough to tackle some cleaning (bathrooms), laundry, and a walk. Today it's back to work, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a negative test later today.

It wasn't all doom and gloom over the weekend, though. Thanks to all the extra crocheting time, I finished the blanket -- which I'd only just started last Thursday!

I did not use a pattern for this blanket, but I can try to explain how I did it. First, I'd learned this method of crochet using a free tutorial that I found on Ravelry (there are a ton of tutorials out there, on blogs and YouTube). Then, I did a little swatch. I crocheted a small square using the variegated skein that came with this set and weighed and measured it to determine how much yarn I used per square inch. Then I used that information to figure out how large a blanket I could make with the yarn I had and what dimensions it could be (I knew I wanted a rectangle, so that made the math a little more challenging). Once I had my numbers, the rest was straightforward. 

I based my calculations on having 500 grams of yarn (five 100 g skeins), but all of mine were a bit more than that, and so I ended up with a bit left of the last skein -- I used a total of 479 grams. I didn't want to cut it too close and risk running out, so I'm happy with that. The finished blanket is about 25 inches wide and 40 inches long, but the yarn is superwash, so I may try to stretch it out a bit larger when I block it. As is, though, it's the perfect size to cover my legs. Perhaps more importantly, it used up a bit more than 1,100 yards of yarn from my stash! It was really the perfect thing to work on while I was sick because it's pretty darn mindless, and now I'm a bit sad that it's done because I won't have it to work on. I suppose I will just need to start another one!