Rudi and I spent a pleasant long Father’s Day and Juneteenth weekend in Connecticut, where we got to visit with my folks, spend time outside, and bask in not being at home for a few days.

Mum and I checked out plants for the garden (I foisted seven seedlings off on her of the flat I bought) and spent time in the kitchen.

Dad and I played pool and listened to music.

Rudi and I ate ice cream.

I baked and read and knit.

It was a good weekend.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The grove next to the District of Columbia War Memorial was filled with fireflies.

2. Our volleyball team made significant improvements as the season went on and ended up making the semi-finals. Then, after some snacks, we went on to win our opening match of the summer season.

3. We got the chance to preview Brian and Charles, a sweet movie about an awkward British tinkerer who invents a sentient robot. If you like stories about friendship and letting relationships grow, please track this one down.

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

Knitters, I’m considering options for my Tour de France Knitalong project for this year. The goal is to finish the project in three weeks, but I often end up going longer.

I’m looking for a shawl that can be knit up with fingering weight yarn, which is the bulk of my stash, either a single skein, like Noora Backlund’s Reyna, or several different colors. Or maybe a sweater, although my track record is way worse at finishing those. If it’s a sweater, I’d like it to be something I could make out of a single color of DK weight or something that could be pieced together out of different skeins, such as Andrea Mowry’s Stripes! or Wool & Pine’s Sea Glass Tee.

Do you have any suggestions that you’ve made or seen that you want to recommend?.

I splurged tonight on a new sweatshirt. It’s for the #1000wordsofsummer writing project that I’m doing. I didn’t need a new sweatshirt, but I will wear it and I wanted a tangible reminder that I am capable of making a commitment to myself for something that feels important to take on. I haven’t done that for myself in a while.

Right now, I’m 11,000 words into the project. None of it has been manna from heaven, but some of it has been insightful and some of it has been fun and some of it has been potentially decent. (I’d have to go back and read those couple of pieces to see if it was just tiredness that made me think that.)

But it has been consistent and proof that I’m capable of sticking with something like this. And writing creatively means I’m thinking more creatively and being open to ideas and that can’t possibly be a bad thing.

I wasn’t feeling this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl and I didn’t get my act together to write a summary of recent reads, which had been my original backup plan. So, instead, I’m sharing ten books that are currently in various stages of being read:

1. Saint Young Men by Hikaru Nakamura
2. The Wedding Crasher by Mia Sosa
3. Battle of the Linguist Mages by Scotto Moore
4. Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
5. Great or Nothing by Joy McCullough, Caroline Tung Richmond, Tess Sharpe, and Jessica Spotswood
6. The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
7. The Boardwalk Bookshop by Susan Mallery
8. Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto
9. Hello, Molly! by Molly Shannon
10. An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten

What are you reading?

It was a nice weekend. I won a contest that netted me a free bucket of beer and a picnic blanket at the Friday night concert down along the River, so Rudi and I biked across town, met up with a volleyball teammate, and spent a beautiful evening listening to a Latin-Irish fusion band, which had a great sound.

Saturday, we went to the March for Our Lives down on the Mall, and while I’m sure our presence wasn’t the tipping point, it does sound like some progress was made overnight toward reaching a passable bill.

Today, I went to the farmers market, spent several hours working in the garden, had a video chat with friends, and watched the Tonys. Because airfare is outrageous right now, I proposed to Rudi that we take a couple overnight trips to New York City, so we procured tickets to three shows over the next two months. We’ve also been talking about seeing the Mets play at Citi Field (we haven’t been since they shut down Shea), so we might wrap that or Shakespeare in Central Park into the mix. Or maybe we can convince one or more of our friends in the area to meet up with us for a meal.