Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. In a surprise to this Mets fan after such a rocky start to the season, my favorite baseball team wasn’t eliminated from playoff contention until the final Wednesday of the season. (And my second-favorite team, the Nationals, clinched a wild-card spot the night before.)

2. I got to try out my new volleyball sneakers on the court. They did not make me play like Kerri Walsh, but they did make my knees feel way better. (Oh, and my new indoor team seems nice. I joined them at the bar for a while after the game because Rudi was out for the evening.)

3. The heat hasn’t disappeared for good yet, but autumn has arrived. I’m looking forward to crisp weather and changing leaves and knitwear season (although not to earlier darkness).

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

No pictures of knitting or books today. I was going to spend the time after volleyball knitting on my shawl (which has remained two rows and the bind-off away from completion for weeks now!), but instead I napped. I did cast on for a new pair of socks with the Halloween yarn I bought this weekend. And I’m attending a local candidate’s forum tomorrow evening, so I’ll be knitting on something while I’m there.

The reading front has been similarly barren. I’ve got The Library Book going in the evenings, Murder in the Locked Library if I leave my desk for lunch, and I just resumed listening to The Bookshop on the Shore tonight.

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

In honor of the first full day of autumn, please join me for a warm drink. This is a pumpkin spice chai latte, but you can have tea or cocoa or coffee or whatever.

Apparently we have to drink those hot beverages now, because there’s a possibility of another heat wave coming through next weekend into next week.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks what we plan on reading for the autumnal season:

1. Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks
2. Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell
3. Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea
4. The Art of Theft by Sherry Thomas:
5. Sherry Thomas’ The Magnolia Sword: A Ballad of Mulan
6. Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
7. Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer
8. Bruja Born by Zoraida Córdova
9. Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars
10. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

How about you? What are you hoping to read now that it’s fall?

In addition to buying books and yarn, I got some other things done this weekend.

Yesterday, I spent some time at the H Street Festival, patronizing a couple of the businesses over there and running into some friends who’ve moved back to the area this summer. And today, Sarah and I went over to Union Market for a little while to get a snack, catch up, and browse in the bookstore.

I also did some reading (Susan Orlean’s The Library Book), bought food at both the grocery store and the farmers market (we’re nearing the end of corn and peach season, but ginger and paw paws, which I only buy for Rudi because I think they taste like banana, are both coming into season), picked tomatoes at the garden, and made a tomato tart and corn on the cob for supper.

And, as a bonus, while I was at the garden, the sound of a concert at one of our local parks wafted over, so I was able to catch the tail end of that, too. (Usually, it’s in July, so I stopped checking for it, once summer had progressed.) It was a nice way to conclude the summer season. (Temperatures: please take the hint and pack up your highs in the 90s! Jeans season should be here!)

How was your final summer weekend?

I did a little shopping today.

The yarn was a splurge when I decided that since the bank has closed earlier than I’d expected it to (and I couldn’t get a roll of quarters to do laundry), I could stop by the yarn shop across the street. They’d recently gotten in a nice assortment of self-striping Havirland Pax Sock. The colorway is The Final Girls (all the Halloween-themed colors seemed to be named after horror films).

The books and cd are all second-hand via the used book sale from my local branch’s Friends of the Library. As a bonus, some of the books were free because I joined the Friends. Most of them I wouldn’t necessarily have bought if they’d been new, but I’ve been on the holds list for The Wedding Date and would have borrowed Christmas Bells toward the holiday. And if I don’t like them, I can donate them back to the library and some other schmuck can buy them next time.

Happy Saturday to me!