Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. So there’s this person who had, for the past few months, been baking bread several days a week and then giving it away on Twitter. I’ve entered their contests a couple times, but never won. Early last week, they mentioned they’d made a sourdough starter for someone who, it turns out, had gone out of town, and would any of us like it. Within a matter of minutes, several of us had raised our hands. The bread maker handed it off to the first volunteer, but reached out to the rest of us and said they’d be happy to make us starters, too. So last Friday, they dropped off several tablespoons of starter in a container, and Rudi and I started caring for it. Sourdough starter needs feeding and watering and changing a couple times a day for the first little bit, but we’re now pretty much at the part where we can dial it back to a couple times a week. See all those dots on the surface? Air bubbles. That’s how you know your sourdough is happy with you.

2. Suddenly, Clare and her original Three Beautiful Things blog popped into my feed reader this week after several years of dormancy.

3. We’ve all mostly settled, comfortably or not, into this new normal routine. I am working from home 8 hours a day and spending a lot of time on conference calls. It is boring, because all the things we’d do for diversity and distraction are mostly unavailable at this time. But, as Grey Kitten noted to me today, given the news, boring is good. We’re all texting and calling and Zooming with our loved ones, hoping for reports of boredom. Because, honestly, the alternative is really scary. I wish boredom for you and your loved ones, too.

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

In this week’s episode of knitting and books from piles around my living room, we have my Wohin socks, now halfway into the first of three repeats of the heel flap pattern. Also, you can clearly see my yarn has shifted into golden from its original yellow. Yes, it does kind of look like a pineapple, or maybe an infected giraffe. But still, they are colorful and mostly cheerful.

Also, on a side note, while looking for a project bag to put this sock in, I opened one and found last year’s Sock Madness socks in there. I’d started the second sock already, which is very exciting!

On the reading front, I raced through and enjoyed Jen Wang’s latest graphic novel, Stargazing, although not as much as I loved The Prince and the Dressmaker.

I continue apace with the latest Veronica Speedwell mystery, The Murderous Relation. I’m making it last, since I can’t return it to the library right now anyway. (They locked all their book returns until the library reopens.

I’m sort of stuck on my audiobook, Helen Hoang’s The Bride Test, because one of the two main characters is about to do something cringeworthy, and if I don’t listen, she can’t do it. To be fair, she also can’t get through it and to her happy ending, so I will have to resume soon.

Finally, I just started Homerooms and Hall Passes by Tom O’Donnell. Haven’t heard of it? It’s the latest role playing game that will take you from the mendacity of your usual plundering and quest solving and plunk you down in a suburban middle school. Life will never be the same for this elf, barbarian, magician, and knight.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see how everyone else is sheltering in place.

You share finished knitwear. (Usually, though it’s Friday.)

Before you all get excited, I finished this shawl in 2018. I’ve worn it a handful of times, although mostly only for fancier occasions.

This is Andrea’s Shawl by Kirsten Kapur. I started it for the Tour de France and Ravellenic Games in 2016, and it only took me 18 months to finish.

I have no idea what the two yarns are. I have their labels in some knitting bag and will update this post (or, at least, my Ravelry project page) when I next stumble across them. I do know I bought all three skeins (two pink and one blue-green, both different brands) at Looped (the yarn shop around the corner from the Burrow) specifically for this project.

Similarly, I have also neglected to record what size needles I knit this with. What did I record, you might ask? Good question!

I did not alter the shape of the shawl from how it was written, which is slightly diamond-shaped. I had meant to, but then forgot and decided not to rip out, but just to keep going with it. I’m glad I didn’t bother, since I was able to block it to only be mildly angular at the top, and it adds a bit of interest to the neckline.

In general, it has the prettiest border of anything I’ve ever made. It was so pretty that I bought a shawl pin to go with it before I’d even finished knitting it.

The shawl pin is a Rajkovich Design (now Silver Siren Designs). And they do go together perfectly!

Stay tuned for modeled shots of shawls finished in 2019 and 2020!

So, here’s the thing: I don’t actually do a lot of cooking. And even my baking is way less than I think it should be. But … I love buying cookbooks. I am a sucker for them! It’s gotten bad enough that I now force myself to take them out of the library and won’t let myself buy a copy unless we’ve made a recipe out of them.

But, at the moment, no one’s libraries are still open. (That’s true, right? Chicago finally closed theirs, right?) And we’re all stress baking. So, if you need a new cookbook, let me give you some recommendations (and a link to one of my local bookstores, which will ship them to you for free through the end of the month).

So, here are ten of my favorite cookbooks, with thanks to That Artsy Reader Girl’s Top Ten Tuesdays:

1. Marion Cunningham’s The Breakfast Book — Hands down, my absolutely most-used baking book.
2. Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden & Martha Holmberg — A great option if you eat seasonally and lots of veg.
3. Teeny’s Tour of Pies by Teeny Lamothe — Teeny is a local baker who wrote a cookbook where you can make mini pies in cupcake tins
4. The Language of Baklava by Diana Abu Jaber — Actually more of a foodie memoir, but with Middle Eastern-American recipes at the end of each chapter, including my favorite hummus recipe.
5. Electric Bread by Suzan Nightingale — My favorite cookbook for my breadmaker.
6. Any Moosewood cookbook — Honestly, I buy these any time I see them at a used bookstore, which isn’t as often as you’d think, in part because their recipes are straightforward, vegetarian, and well loved and, therefore, home cooks don’t often part with their copies.
7. Laura Werlin’s Great Grilled Cheese — Okay, so this is less great cookbook and more just inspiration in a book when I’m wanting melty cheese in a different way (brie with apricot jam, for instance).
8. Perfect Pops by Charity Ferreira — Popsicles are very comforting and can be made while you sleep.
9. The Joy of Cooking — Because sometimes you just need an all-purpose, no nonsense cookbook to give you the bare basics.
10. My grandmother’s collection of recipes — Sorry. You won’t find this in the bookshop, but it is one of my most treasured possessions.

I have not cooked from either of these cookbooks, but they would be next on my list to buy: José Andres’ and Matt Gouldings’ Vegetables Unleashed (it’s only a matter of time before he adds Nobel Peace Prize winner to his resume) and The Hot Bread Kitchen by Jessamyn Waldman Rodriguez (all bread products originated by the women who have trained/work at this NYC immigrant-friendly bakery). I have read all the recipes in the latter and would absolutely bake my way front to back.

How about you? What are your favorite cookbooks/baking books?

You may have heard (honestly, I have no idea what the press outside the region is reporting about this) that people are stupid and still flocked to the cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin here in D.C.

Earlier in the week, I had given some thought to riding my bike down to the area and doing a loop of Hains Point (it’s an island adjacent to the Tidal Basin) just to see the blossoms. But the fact that there were enough people down there to be newsworthy made that seem like a stupid idea, because people park at Hains Point and walk over to the Tidal Basin. Or they just drive their car around Hains Point to admire the view from their windshield. But either way, that didn’t seem like it would make social distancing possible unless I fancied going in the dark, which seemed like it would defeat the whole idea of going. So I didn’t.

However, while the Tidal Basin is home to the most famous of D.C.’s cherry trees groupings, we actually have quite a few elsewhere in the city, including at Rose Park, which is just a few blocks away.

So, I biked over there, and while there were people about, they were obviously locals who were mostly sensibly keeping their distance from one another.

So here’s this spring’s batch of cherry blossom shots (they were slightly past prime today and now it’s raining, so this will be the best I can offer).