Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The vet’s office sent us a lovely bouquet this week in memory of Posey.

2. Despite missing my original flight (decidedly not beautiful), I had a really nice visit to Connecticut over the weekend. We celebrated Dad’s 75th birthday, and I got to hang out with my folks, enjoy late summer flowers and early autumn color, catch up on sleep, and spend time with Karen hiking, chatting, and consider vocabulary. I also got to eat some of my favorite foods, including homemade scones and apple pie, pizza, doughnuts, and chicken divan.

3. As hard as it is to leave everyone in Connecticut, it was nice to return to Rudi and the cats and the comforts of being home.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world recently? If you’d like to see how other people talked about three things, check out Carole’s Three on Thursday post.

While away last weekend, I didn’t get a whole lot of reading done, being too busy visiting to curl up with my books. But I’m back home now, which means wrapping up a bunch of things in progress. I just finished listening to The Scam as I was knitting the last of my heel decreases, the latest of the romantic Fox and O’Hare heist series that is ridiculously bad, but still enjoyable. That leaves me with Teraji P. Henson’s memoir checked back out on audio, which came back around again finally, unless I opt to start Shadowshaper before the end of Latino Heritage Month.

The other books I have going are Be Careful What You Witch For, a mass market mystery novel that fits in my bag (and thus only gets read when I’m out); The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, a historical fiction mystery/romance which I’m about a third of the way through; and Patina, the second book in the Track series by Jason Reynolds, about four middle-schoolers who join an elite track team.

I’m eager to begin The Fifth Season, the first of a highly regarded fantasy series; Warbringer (about Wonder Woman); and Jason Reynolds’ Miles Morales/Spiderman novel. I have several other books out from the library that don’t fall into the supernatural category, but these three are the ones most exciting me at the moment.

As mentioned above, I’m past the heel on the first Little Pumpkins sock, and since I moved the cable around so the pumpkin runs down the front of my foot, I only have to cable every 8 rows. I anticipate finishing the foot this weekend and then quickly moving on to sock #2. After all, one wants to finish before Halloween! I also have picked my Andrea’s Shawl back up after a year of it solely missing a border. I’m about halfway through picking up the stitches for that, and then it’s less than a dozen rows of knitting. I’m looking forward to it being done by the time the cool weather reappears on the East coast.

If you’d like to see what others are knitting and reading, head over to Kat’s Unraveled Wednesday post.

If it’s Thursday, it’s time for three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Sarah and I spent Sunday afternoon out in the Virginia countryside. We picked apples, ate cider doughnuts, and explored a cute, historic downtown.

2. Julia and I spent Saturday afternoon at Union Market. We checked out an artisan fair, and while the Hawaiian doughnut shop was closed (must get there earlier next time), we did get to try faloodas, a type of Burmese dessert drink. It’s made with flavored jellies (kind of like mini jello squares; she went with coffee, I with pomegranate), rose water, basil seeds, rice balls, milk, and ice cream — and is very rich and very tasty.

3. Rudi has a new job working for one of the dockless bikeshare systems (shareable bicycles that can be left pretty much anywhere around the city, rather than needing to be returned to a specific place) that launched in D.C. in September. It’s a move into a field that he’s really excited about exploring, and I really couldn’t be happier for him.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world recently?

Want to read about three things of interest to other people? Visit Carole’s Three on Thursday.