Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I had a book on hold for me at the main library branch here in D.C., which I had yet to properly explore since it fully reopened. I picked up my book plus an impulse pick off the new fiction shelf, bought a tea from the cafe for a mere $2, and took myself up to the new rooftop terrace, a garden oasis five stories above the street. While lying on a bench next to a patch of lamb’s-ear, getting acquainted with a new character, I was hit with such a wave of fondness for this city, where they value libraries so highly as to conceive of this haven for their residents.

2. The first sweet cherries of the year

3. We finally shifted some things so we could slot an old bookshelf into a new spot and fill it with books that had been sitting in bags.

Whats’ been beautiful in your world lately?

I mentioned last week that I’m trying to get a few projects off my needles by the end of this month so I can cast on something new for the Tour de France Knitalong on July 1st without feeling guilty. A pair of socks just need their ends woven in to be done, and this shawl, my Fully Charged from last year’s race, is blocking and awaiting a fashion show. If I’m very productive, I have three projects I’d like to wrap up in the next three weeks. That may be an ambitious goal, but I’m trying to focus on creative endeavors this month as part of my sabbatical before I have to turn my attention to job hunting.

On the reading front, I am actively listening to two books, Lyssa Kay Adams’ The Bromance Book Club and The Boardwalk Bookshop by Susan Mallery. I’m only a couple chapters into the latter and just getting to know the three main characters, but I’m wondering if it’s the read for me. (On the face of it, three women creating a bookshop/cupcake bakery/giftshop on the beach should be right up my alley, but it’s feeling a little … traditional … in its scene setting at the moment. I’ll probably give it another chapter before I decide to something that feels a little more up-to-date. I have Molly Shannon’s and Jenny Lawson’s latest memoirs and Benjamin Alire Sáere’s sequel to Aristotle and Dante Conquer the World (read by Lin-Manuel Miranda) checked out already and just waiting for me to clear space enough to download them to my phone.

On the paper front, I’ve returned to Saint Young Men, the Japanese manga about Jesus and Buddha rooming together in Tokyo in the early-aughts (it’s going much faster now that I understand that while I read the text left to right, I read the text bubbles right to left), picked up and immediately started Mia Sosa’s The Wedding Crasher (set here in D.C.) at a Little Free Library in the park, and am savoring Malinda Lo’s highly lauded The Telegraph Club for Pride Month.

Check out what others are reading and crafting at As Kat Knits.

I missed the local peonies at the farmers market, but Trader Joe’s had my back. They have a place of honor in the living room.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share books with units of time in their title. Here are ten from my to-be-read list:

1. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life by Donald Miller
2. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
3. My Year with Eleanor by Noelle Hancock
4. The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemison
5. Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr
6. Around the World in 72 Days by Nellie Bly
7. Ghost Month by Ed Lin
8. Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger
9. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
10. The 24-Hour Café by Libby Page

Have you read any of these? Do you have other timely titles to recommend?

Happy Sunday night, everyone! I hope you had a nice weekend. Mine included the usual — reading, knitting, going to the farmers market, playing volleyball, swimming, cycling, gardening, and attending an outdoor concert.

I also did something impulsive. After seeing Laura Lippman’s tweet Saturday morning, I signed up for #1000wordsofsummer, a daily writing accountability project. One Thousand Words of Summer is a bit of a misnomer, because technically it only goes for two weeks. But, it’s meant to act as a structure to get you moving for the summer on some type of writing project, 1000 words at a time.

Because I am on a summer sabbatical before looking for a new job and because my volunteer gig has gone on hiatus until next month, I feel a bit like a dandelion pappus — prone to being blown along by the winds of the day. I need a few must-do’s to anchor the day better, and I’m hoping a return to writing will be one of them.

For the first few days, I’m just journaling, trying to get my writing sea legs back under me. If, by the end of the two weeks, I can zero in on some larger writing goal — a series of articles or essays or a creative writing project, for instance — I’d be very happy, but I’m not inclined to make that a mandate of the project. Most of the writing I’ve done in the last year has been either grant applications or blog entries, and my writing muscles are feeling weak and whiny. So, I will ask them to get the reps in for the next two weeks, but I won’t critique form. However sloppy the work — tangents, unfinished thoughts, overuse of adjectives and conjunctions — it’ll count toward the finish line.

And even if nothing else comes of it, at least I’ll have shown up.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. English peas eaten straight from the garden

2. Cygnets and ducklings at Constitution Garden

3. Refrigerator jam

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