Puzzled

After months of itching to do a jigsaw puzzle, I broke one out a week ago Saturday. At first, I limited working on it to about an hour a day, but after a while that turned into many hours a day, especially the closer I got to having it finished and off the dining room table. It turned out to be more difficult that I expected - all that black! - but I persevered.

So that itch has been satisfied for a while.

Crochet: I'm still struggling with the border of the baby blanket. I ran out of yarn, fetched a toddler sweater I knit for my granddaughter, with the intention of deconstructing it, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I decided to do the border in white/cream/natural, but the second yarn, while also superwash, is a little heavier than the main yarn. I am 95% sure I have some white Cascade 220 Superwash around here somewhere, but can't locate it. The vague border instructions in the pattern almost make sense, but there seems to be too few stitches in the border on the sides and too many on the top and bottom. It's just one thing after another.
Knit: I reached a decision point on the Lithuanian mittens. Somehow I ended up with an extra pattern repeat in the body. It's only three stitches, but results in an extra vertical ridge, which means that I have an odd number of vertical ridges, which means I will have to modify the pattern to take this into consideration when I start the decreases. Meanwhile, I received requests for more 'Graham' slouchy hats, in "neutral colors" (black or gray), so started one of those. The good news is I have new glasses and can now see the black stitches more easily.

And that's about all I have accomplished in the past week or so.

I read the NYTimes online. Each day they show the twelve states with the highest number of new Covid cases, per capita, from the day before (today Indiana was number four), and the highest average new Covid cases over the past week, per capita (Indiana is the hottest hot spot in the nation). It's crazy, almost as crazy as several of my neighbors who keep flying their Trump flags. Beam me up, Scotty!