Honestly, it’s been a hard week for all of us. But these are the weeks when we have to find the things that give us light. Here are three beautiful things from my past week:

1. My Saturday volleyball league is helmed by a really nice guy, John, who brought a case of water with him and made sure we paused in between sets to cool off in the shade and rehydrate on the hottest day of the year so far. Plus, he carried that water and a volleyball net plus a solar charging pad, battery, and other assorted odds and ends to the field on his scooter.

2. As I was walking to the farmers market yesterday, I passed a cyclist who looked to be about my mother’s age. His bike was outfitted with spoke beads and a music speaker, and he was sporting a velour duster and a blue mohawk bike helmet.

3. My brother and brother-not-in-law are visiting the northeast this week, and my brother texted me a photo of them and my parents together.

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

“Hope” is the thing with feathers —
That perches in the soul —
And sings the tune without the words —
And never stops — at all —

And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard —
And sore must be the storm —
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm —

I’ve heard in in the chillest land —
And on the strangest Sea —
Yet — never — in Extremity,
It asked a crumb — of me.

      ~Emily Dickinson

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share quotes from books. While I love to quote books (ask Rudi how often I demand he stop doing something to listen while I read aloud), I don’t often record them someplace permanent. So instead of ten items, as would be normal on a Tuesday, I give you three: two quotes from my current reads and one from 2001, when I had a reading journal with a section for favorite passages:

“Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own.” – Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson

“The willingness to take a beating: That’s how you know you’re dealing with a man of substance. A man like that doesn’t linger on the sidelines throwing gasoline on someone else’s fire; and he doesn’t go home unscathed. He presents himself front and center, undaunted, prepared to stand his ground until he can’t stand at all.” – Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“There were more books than the space seemed to allow. This is not unusual. Books, after all, have their own peculiar gravity, given the collective weight of words and thoughts and ideas. Just as the gravitational field around a black hole bends and wobbles the space around it, so, too, does the tremendous mass of ideas of a large collection of books create its own dense gravity. Space gets funny around books.” – Kelly Barnhill, The Ogress and the Orphans

How about you? Do you have favorite passages from books?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. A friend who’d been out of work for a while started a new job this morning.

2. A friend who had a baby last month sent new photos of her daughter.

3. I spent the evening at the park reading amidst the irises.

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

I continue along The Lincoln Highway with Emmett and Billy and Duchess and Wooly, but theirs is not a journey that can be hurried. So I’ve dipped into a couple of other books, looking for a companion read. I’ve found it with Kelly Barnhill’s The Ogress and the Orphans. If you read her The Girl Who Drank the Moon, you’ll know that she is an amazing fairy tale storyteller, and the first chapters of this book do not disappoint. I only wish I had a small person to read it aloud to. I read the first chapter to the cat, but he didn’t seem impressed. I think it’s his loss.

My rainbow socks are finally off the needles, and the Tour de France knitalong begins in a little more than six weeks. Rather than start something new, I’m trying to see what other lingering projects I can wrap up. Next up are my Smock Madness socks, which date back, I believe, to 2018. As you can see, this is not asking for a huge time commitment, because all I have are a toe to finish (and I think a hole to patch on the foot).

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what others are reading and crafting.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is to share books that we were desperate to get our hands on, but that have sat on our TBR pile ever since. Here are ten of mine, which include books by some of my favorite authors:

1. Paradise, Toni Morrison
2. The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver
3. The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
4. At Home, Bill Bryson
5. On Writing, Stephen King
6. Threatened, Eliot Schrefer
7. Isla and the Happily Ever After, Stephanie Perkins
8. Truthwitch, Susan Dennard
9. Wayward Son, Rainbow Rowell
10. The Constant Rabbit, Jasper Fforde

How about you? Do you have any books lingering on your TBR pile that you just had to have?