I embark upon a cross-country work trip Wednesday, the first of four trips in the next month, so a lot of my weeekend to-do list focuses on prepping for that.

But it also includes some fun, as well:

• Watch a video — I picked up Judy, Valentine’s Day, and Pokémon Detective Pikachu at the library this week. (And Rudi has promised to be home from practice relatively early tomorrow.)
• Do laundry.
• Spend time outside.
• Go to a craft fair in the old subterranean trolley station in my neighborhood.
• Bowl.
• Pick up sweets in Chinatown to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
• Bake shortbread — I have Mary Berry’s cookbook out from the library and bought semolina last week.
• Clean the kitchen.
• Finish my shawl.
• Paint my nails (but maybe not until after bowling on Sunday).

How about you? What are you hoping to do on this final weekend of January?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I scored respectably well (a 91) in my first bowling match of the season — high enough to be helpful to the team, but not so high that it seems out of reach to bowl it again. The group was organized by one of my volleyball teammates and includes women who play volleyball or kickball with her. We’re such a large group there was concern that we might not be able to fit in the one game necessary to avoid forfeit, but we squeaked through with two minutes to go. The kickball folks seem nice, and it was fun to have a destination on a Sunday afternoon.

2. Our building’s heat has been on the fritz this week, and this afternoon our handyman and his brother installed the part that had broken.

3. After four and a half months at my new job, I finally managed to schedule a work-at-home day — for tomorrow. Lugging my work laptop and reference materials home this evening wasn’t fun (mostly because I detoured via the library and the grocery store, which meant a mile of walking with three bags, rather than the two blocks from the bus stop carrying just the one, all while wearing heels), but I know that not having to race out of bed, out of my pj’s, and out of the door in the morning is going to seem ultra luxurious. Plus, it may warm up enough and get sunny for a bit before the evening rain moves in, letting me work some from the park.

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

No new knitting news to report at the moment, but I do have some reading updates.

I have finished listening to Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia. Next up in the headphones will be the second installment in Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series, A Fatal Grace. I put both my paper books aside. I have a plane flight next week, so if I’m awake for any of it, it should be good listening.

I put both my paper books aside last week to finish Tuesday and am in no rush to pick them up again. I have a bunch of middle grade and YA titles out of the library right now though, so sampled a couple tonight to decide what will be next. Lynne Kelly’s Song for a Whale looks promising, but didn’t grab me the way Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia did. In this story, Tristan’s best friend has died, leaving him a journal filled with African and African American-based folklore stories from a class project they’d been working on. Except now the journal glows green and has an unusual symbol on the cover. Tristan is heading to Alabama to work on his grandparents’ farm for the summer and get past his grief, except that now, in addition to mending fences, he might also have to help John Henry and Brer Rabbit contend with African gods. Doesn’t it sound so good?

What are you reading?

This weekend I wove in the ends and wore for the first time my Posey socks. I’d finished the knitting — which I started back in January 2018 — this past spring, but had simply put them away for the season at the time.

I bought the yarn, Lollipop Yarn Quintessential Gripes in Purrfection, the day our cat Posey died back in 2017. I’d picked up the ball because the colors reminded me of her — she was white with grey and brown patches and had an adorable pink nose and pink ears that stood out through her fur — and then saw the name, and pretty much knew it was a sign.

The dark grey of the heel and toe was a mini skein from MarigoldJen Yarns that I picked up at the Homespun Yarn Party a couple years ago.

Much like Posey, the socks are soft and comfortable and adorable.

For this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic, That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share the top ten most recent additions to our personal bookish collections:

1. Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller: I picked up this at a Little Free Library on Saturday.
2. Kate Murphy’s You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters: This book came as a freebie with the purchase of …
3. The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern: I bought this on New Year’s Day, when one of our local indie bookshops was having a sale, because I loved her debut novel.
4. A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader, edited by Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick: Karen gave me this collection of letters for Christmas.
5. The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang: A surprise gift from my parents for Christmas.
6. The Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling: Rudi’s mom gave me the illustrated version for Christmas.
7. Hillary McKay’s The Skylark’s War: I picked this up while doing some last minute Christmas shopping when I saw it, because I hadn’t realized it had finally been published in the U.S.
8. Jasmine Guillory’s Royal Holiday
9. Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley
10. The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary: All three of these books came from my #TBTBSanta, Helen.

What are some of the most recent additions to your personal library?

“A Dream” by Common and Will.i.am.