May I please have another?

I admit that sometimes I squander my weekends away. I mean, I appreciate them greatly — each and every time — but sometimes I do that from a prone and unconscious position. And sometimes from in front of the computer.

But this weekend, I promise, I used it wisely.

I started it by heading to Teaism with my knitting and enjoying a lassi and chocolate salty oat cookie in the lovely summer evening. Then I joined Rudi, Sarah, and Julia for a 3D showing of Toy Story 3. I laughed. I cried. I’m not sure that it was better than Cats or even than cats. But it was quite good. And then we went out for pizza and stayed out late just chatting.

Saturday, I slept in a smidge. I did some laundry. I ate tuna fish sandwiches with Rudi. I finished a book. We drank lassis. (Not lassies. That would be weird.) We watched the blue jay baby figure out how to get up to the air conditioner. I got my toenails painted a sparkly purple. We went to the Washington Club where we and others celebrated our friends Susan and Phillip’s recent wedding. It was lovely. The food was terrific. They had the loudest string group I’ve ever encountered, which helped add to the festive atmosphere. They had a whole table devoted to desserts. And, most importantly, Susan and Phillip just looked so utterly happy and in love. We all finished the night at the bar next door.

Today, we watched the Tour de France. We watched the World Cup final. I went to the farmers’ market. I ate a very tasty French pastry and drank strong tea. We went to the pool. We went to the garden and watered and weeded and planted. We dined on blueberries and corn on the cob and chicken and zucchini. We watched an episode of The Mentalist and the last of the latest batch of Miss Marples. I played with the cats. We admired how much the baby blue jay has grown and changed in the four days we’ve known him. We chatted with our families. I finished the next clue of the sock I’m test knitting and encountered no snags.

And yet … yet … I want more time. I want to read another book. I don’t want to clean, but I want to achieve some semblance of tidiness. I want to listen to a baseball game on the radio. I want to go berry picking. I want to go on a bike ride. I want to call up friends and chat with them about what they’ve been up to lately. I want to barbecue. I want to picnic. I want to get up early and doze on a blanket in the early morning sunshine.

I admit it. I’m greedy. I just want more.

A short week which means that I am a bit behind on the correct day of the week. It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Last night there was a weird thunk in the window well, which we assumed was a neighborhood rat. This morning, when screeching awoke us, come to find out that it was a fledgling blue jay who might have left the nest a day or two early. After Rudi’s attempts to lift it up to street level were met with vicious attacks by blue jay parents, we spent the day worrying about the baby’s fate. And this evening, when we returned to find it still alive, if a bit groggy, we tried to figure out a way to get it out of the window well without starring in our own version of The Birds. But, come to find out, fledglings often spend quite a bit of time on the ground before they learn to fly. And the Internets suggest that we just leave it be and it will eventually fly out on its own. Yay for learning things — and for education literally in front of our noses!

2. The Fourth of July in the U.S. means fireworks. We took ours with a serving of national monuments and patriotic music. This year’s display was the best we’ve seen in the seven years we’ve been here and Rudi has the photos to prove it.

3. We caught the final hours of the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival on Monday afternoon, where the highlight of the three exhibits was definitely Mexico. We learned about tequila. We watched a craftsman casually insert tiny inlays of cedar along the body of a guitar he’d built, hardly even needing to look at what he was doing. And, at the end of the day, we watched four men climb to the top of a hundred foot pole. One of them stood atop the pole, playing his flute, dancing, and jumping to pay respect to the four cardinal directions and then the four, with their festive pink plumed headgear, attached themselves to ropes and spiralled down to the ground in the Danza del Bixom Tíiw, the Dance of the Hawk, which honors the Lord of the Corn. Hillary got photos of the ceremony earlier in the day. The Smithsonian has a video.

I never told you about the last pair of socks I finished way back at the end of May:

These are my Stranded in Mount Pleasant Socks. They were knit in the Crusoe pattern from the Spring 2003 issue of Knitty. I used my entire skein of Neighborhood Fiber Co. Studio Sport yarn in the Mount Pleasant colorway and then had to resort to leftover Woolarina yarn from socks I knit in 2006. I like that a) I recognized before I began the toes of sock #1 that I was likely to run out of yarn and so waited to knit the toes for both socks until the end and b) I was able to find another local yarn dyer to use for the toes, keeping these socks truly D.C. based. (Interestingly, I first encountered Woolarina yarn at the Mount Pleasant Festival. I had forgotten that fact until just now… Eerily appropriate, no?)

The pattern was well-written, but there was some well-documented disconnect between the needle size and the number of stitches you were instructed to cast on. Ultimately, I worked my socks on 52 stitches using 3.5mm needles.

Just last week I was wearing an outfit (neon blue skirt and black tshirt with pink hair elastics) that, had it not been 95 degrees outside would have gone great with these socks. As it was, though, I opted to go with flip-flops and save these for cooler weather.

It’s time to summarize the books I read for the Once Upon a Time Challenge.

In addition to what’s listed below, I read several books I originally thought would fit into this challenge but which, on reflection, did not. As such, I merely completed Quest the First to “read at least 5 books that fit somewhere within the Once Upon a Time IV criteria.” The six books I read were:

• The Collected Tales of Nurse Matilda (fairy tale)
• The Necromancer (mythology)
• Queen Zixi of Ix (fairy tale)
• The Red Pyramid (mythology) (review TK)
• Savvy (folk tale)
• The Sorceress (mythology)

While I liked all of the books I read, I’d have to say that the highlight was the first one I read, Savvy. I’d recommend it for anyone.

My other goal for the challenge was to re-read A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I made it partway through the play within the early June time frame, but ultimately failed to finish before the Solstice.

As always, this was a fun read-along and one I’ll be doing again next spring.

The Collected Tales of Nurse Matilda, by Christianna Brand

From the jacket: “Once upon a time there was a huge family of children; and they were terribly, terribly naughty…”

My take: After the large and ever-growing brood of Brown children terrorize their nannies, tutors, nurses, governesses, and maids with their horrible behavior (although their mother believes them to be misunderstood angels), the help quits en masse, declaring that only Nurse Matilda could sort out those children. Every staffing agency in town agrees — there’s no one left to help, but Nurse Matilda.

And, oh! Nurse Matilda is quite a handful herself. Only able to work where she’s needed but not wanted, she’s dressed in dour clothing, is ugly with a nose like a potato and a snaggle-tooth, and carries a big black stick. And woe to those misbehaving when Nurse Matilda bangs her stick on the floor. The miscreant might find him- or herself unable to stop doing the same awful thing, no matter how much he or she might want to. Or if you were pretending to be sick, you might legitimately start to be ill and have to go into the hospital. Somehow, the fear of the fate that big black stick might force upon you might make you rethink your behavior, at least for a minute.

Slowly, the children go from willfully being as bad as can be (bordering on malevolent) to periodically misbehaving to eventually understanding how to avoid getting into trouble in the first place. And as they make this transition, it occurs to them that Nurse Matilda is looking less and less ugly…

This particular book included all three of the Nurse Matilda fairy tales originally published in the 1960s and ’70s, which provided the (loose) source material of the 2005 film Nanny McPhee.

While I liked the stories well enough, I did feel that putting them all together in one volume probably diminished their effect as all three are quite similar in both scope and execution. Cute enough to read through to the end, but I certainly wouldn’t do more than take it out of the library if you’re curious about it.

Pages: 300

This is one of the books I read for the Once Upon a Time Challenge.

Not me!

I did many things I thought I should below, but failed to follow through on a couple.

On the other hand, I slept in every morning. I read a whole novel start to finish in one sitting. I watched the Tour de France prologue. I’ve made huge progress on the colorwork sock I’m knitting (which is secret test knitting so can’t be shown for a couple more weeks). I ate most of a pint of blueberries for breakfast yesterday. I colored our sugar for the Fourth of July. I watched the best fireworks display I’ve seen since moving down here while lying next to the Lincoln Memorial. We went swimming and picked the first of our yard-long beans. I saw a baseball game with a tremendously exciting ninth inning. We watched a movie I’ve wanted to see for ages since it was out in theaters. I drank tamarind soda. We witnessed an amazing traditional Mexican ceremony at the Folklife Festival. I bought a Christmas cd. I got a dragon tattoo. We ate pizza. I played in sprinklers.

I don’t know… Seems like a pretty great way to spend a weekend, doesn’t it?

I hope yours was equally nice!

It’s good to have plans for the weekend:

Saturday: Lie in the hammock. Read. Knit. Go to Mets-Nationals game.

Sunday: Go to farmers’ market. Eat yummy breakfast. Read. Go to pool. Water garden. Make daiquiris. Watch fireworks.

Monday: Sleep late. Read. Go to Folklife Festival. Catch a movie.

Got plans this weekend?

It’s the Thursday before a long weekend, which is beautiful in its own right. But let’s be a bit more specific, shall we? Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. After dropping by a fundraiser in Northeast, I head a few doors down to a relatively new restaurant — Dangerously Delicious Pies. [Jenn, I just heard you squeal from 400 miles away!] At a friend’s recommendation, I have the last slice (or hunk, as my grandfather would have said) of the Baltimore Bomb, a delicious concoction that combines a cookie crust covered with chocolate and filled with a vanilla chess custard. And did I mention that they warm it up before serving it?

2. Twenty (or so) soon-to-be-published books to read (and review). Totally makes working through the weekend worth it.

3. On Monday afternoon, we finish packing the booth up by 4 and head home early. There is enough time in my evening to knit at Teaism while sipping a mango juice and then come home for a pre-dinner nap with Rudi.

What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

Must go to bed. More tomorrow…

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…………