It’s a shorter weekend than usual with Daylight Savings Time subtracting an hour in favor of evening light. I know some of you have trouble with it, but I am always in favor of this change.

This weekend is a change from usual in that not only do we get less of it, but that Rudi is actually home at night! He hasn’t been here for a Saturday night since early January — and he’ll be gone starting next Friday for ten days coaching the post-season in upstate New York. He is excited for both races — and to see where the Lake Placid Olympics were held, so I’m pleased for him. And I’m pleased for me that that will be the last road trip for the ski season.

We’ve got the dvd of The Hate U Give penciled in for tomorrow night, although friends may be in from out of town, in which case seeing them will obviously take priority and the dvd can get bumped to Sunday night.

The rain picked up this afternoon just as I was going to run some errands, so I decided to put them off until tomorrow. Tomorrow looks to be dry and Sunday’s forecast is for highs nearing 70, so I think it was an okay tradeoff. Plus, one of them is over at the Navy Yard, so I can take a stroll through Eastern Market’s weekend stalls while I’m over there.

I may stop by the garden to plant some more peas and see if anything is sprouting yet. I wonder if I should wait before planting some seeds for greens — chard and kale and spinach — or if I feel optimistic about my odds now that it’s March.

I’m nearly done listening to Geekerella, so I’ll definitely be spending some time finishing it up while knitting my socks. I’d like to make a little time to paint my nails, too, so that’s some additional time I probably shouldn’t spend using my fingers…

And then there’s the usual farmers market and laundry and tidying.

But mostly I’m just looking forward to seeing Rudi tomorrow evening.

What do you have planned for the weekend?

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Three beautiful things from this past week:

1. The librarian at the info desk was so patient with an older woman who’d recently added a Kindle to her life. He answered her questions (including, “Is it a phone?”), let her use his computer to access Amazon, and even read her the Captcha on the login.

2. The National Park Service announced their first stab at the dates for the peak cherry blossom season. They refine it based on the upcoming weather, but right now it’s set for the very beginning of April.

3. The bikeshare dock by the metro station nearest my book club had one of the system’s e-assist bikes, which I greatly appreciated, since the road to the library was cold and uphill and I was a little later than I’d hoped to be.

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

The beginning of March may herald college basketball playoffs for some, but for many sock knitters it marks the start of Sock Madness, the springtime sock knitting competition.

The first pattern, Smock Madness, dropped on Sunday and I began knitting Monday evening. (I’m not feeling overly competitive right now.) The first round will end in ten days on the 17th, by which point I hope to have a complete pair of socks that will enable me to move forward into the next round. Yesterday evening, I knit for a bit next to the outdoor fireplace at Glen’s, which is what you see above. I’m a little further along now.

On the reading front, I have nothing new to report. I’m still working on Geekerella and Early Riser. I picked up Marlon James’ Black Leopard, Red Wolf at the member sale over the weekend at Rudi’s request. He’d heard an interview with the author on NPR while driving home one weekend and was really excited by it. I’d put a hold on it at the library, but since we both want to read it, it made sense to buy a copy.

Head over to As Kat Knits for more knitting and reading posts.

Today was Mardi Gras, the final celebration before the Lenten season of self-deprivation and self-improvement begins. Historically, because people wanted to use up their stores of things they were going to give up starting on Ash Wednesday, it is traditionally a day of consuming baked goods, particularly deep-fried ones, like doughnuts.

In the United Kingdom, it’s pancakes that get celebrated, and Rudi and I decided we like that tradition. I’m only meh about traditional pancakes (except during blueberry season, when I’m all in), but really like crepes, so that’s traditionally our Mardi Gras meal of choice. We opted for spinach and cheese this year.

I mentioned over the weekend that my folks had given me an aebleskiver pan for Christmas, which I had yet to christen, and this seemed like a good time to do so.

Aebleskiver are poofy Danish pancakes that are cooked in a cast iron skillet with indentations for frying up Munchkin-like pancakes, often filled with fruit or jam (or served alongside it).

The dough, which calls for separated eggs, took me a while to make, in part because we’d already used a bunch of dishes to make the crepes. But I got it made (whipping egg whites with my mixer is so much faster than by hand!)

The recipe I was using said to put a tablespoon of dough into each indentation, add jam, and then top with a second tablespoon. “Scant” is probably a word I’ll add to that, because the first batch, which went to Rudi were even more overflowing than mine:

The instructions also said you should use two skewers to pull up the pancakes and flip them over in their little nests. I didn’t have skewers, so I used fondue forks, which were fine. Chopsticks also probably would have worked. Primarily, I forgot the first rule of pancake flipping, which is to wait for those little bubbles at the edge to indicate it’s time to avoid a big mess. And then I didn’t recognize that it was going to be a little messy regardless, and just to sort of poke any extra bits into the indentation to let them cook into the poofs. And maybe to turn them again 90 degrees to account for any dough not quite done because of that.

Rudi doesn’t love raspberry seeds, so his were filled with strawberry rhubarb jam. Mine had raspberry rose jam, which made mine smell heavenly. I’m excited to experiment with some other fillings in future batches. I have some thick chocolate raspberry sauce in the fridge that could work. The other recipe that came with the pan suggests you can put pieces of apple in instead of jam, so that should be fun, too.

Top with powdered sugar and enjoy while warm. I think when we cook up the rest of them (because we don’t actually participate in Lenten abstentions), I’ll make some sipping hot chocolate to enjoy with them. I think that will be perfect.

A kind Ravelrer, Chomp, saw my post seeking to buy leftover yarn to finish my shawl and sent me a message on the site earlier today. She had a smidge under 10 grams left from a project and would be happy to send the yarn my way. She then followed up to say that her husband had mailed the envelope. It is coming from across the country, so it might not arrive until next week, but it’s coming!

I am so delighted. I’m knitting my Sock Madness qualifier sock right now, so I will just let the shawl hang out in its project bag until her package arrives. Then I’ll lay out the five mini balls of yarn (her two, plus my three) to make the color changes between them work as well as possible.

I’m so excited that I’m going to get to finish the shawl the way I wanted to.

The weekend included:

• New books and music, courtesy of my brother and his partner and our 2018 member rewards
• Pizza from my favorite local pizzeria, thanks to my folks
• Phone calls with my parents and both Karen and Grey Kitten
• Chores — laundry and vacuuming and floor mopping and kitchen tidying and sheet changing and shopping at the farmers market
• Sitting outside next to a happy baby
• Lots of hot chocolate
• Cookies left over from my birthday
• Hearing that my volleyball league got enough players to move forward this week
• A trip to the library to pick up The Hate U Give dvd
• Listening to my new cds — loudly
• Knitting while watching tv
• Reading — both on paper and on audio

My nails remain their same chippy selves, so I’ll probably just leave them until next weekend, when it’s closer to St. Patrick’s Day. I didn’t start my Sock Madness sock, although I’ve narrowed down my yarn choices to two skeins. I also didn’t block the shawl. (Both of those things are on tap for tomorrow, as is some baking, since Rudi is back home now. And I pretty much know where the tax forms are, so mostly now it’s just a matter of filling out the forms.

How was your weekend?