This is Alaina Reed Hall, who portrayed Olivia on Sesame Street, performing “Golden Slumbers.” The music was composed by Sam Pottle, with lyrics by Emily Perl Kingsley, and it was written for the Sleepytime Bird special, in which Big Bird sings his mother’s lullaby to Little Bird and then can’t get to sleep himself.

Pottle was Sesame Street‘s second musical director and is best remembered for composing the theme song to The Muppet Show. Kingsley was a longtime writer for the series and is credited with writing the special.

The soundtrack for the special was one of my favorites for overcoming insomnia in my teen years. I played it so often that I wore out the cassette (recorded either off the tv or off a library copy of the album). Rudi bought me a copy of the LP as a gift one year early in our relationship.

There are no photos of the pool, the park, or the pancakes (or Rudi, for that matter). But I’ve got photos of the library:

The ballpark:

And the garden:

How was your weekend?

Thanks to those of you who weighed in on the smaller shawls I was considering for the Tour de France Knitalong. Fully Charged and Winterberry both got multiple votes.

I thought I’d share a few more shawls, but this time they’re larger pieces, calling for three or more skeins of yarn. Usually, this makes them more wearable, but also it means they’ll take longer to knit, and the odds of finishing in three weeks the Tour lasts diminishes significantly.

I’ve been looking at Pressed Flowers since before last year’s Tour, and the fact that I’m still considering it bodes well. It’s a heavier yarn and requires 3-4 skeins.

Nightshift is another pattern I’ve looked at over and over again. Again, a heavier weight shawl.

Fernweh is a brioche shawl, knit with sock yarn.

Rodanthe is mosaic, knit with sock yarn.

Quicksilver alternates stripes with mesh lace.

The Everything Shawl combines two skeins of sock yarn with one skein of mohair.

At the last minute, we were given today off from work to celebrate Juneteenth. It was a lovely surprise.

I used the afternoon to pick blueberries and spent a little time this evening reading So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo.

Tomorrow, I’m planning a trip to the library, garden, and pool. I have beans to plant and holds to pick up and am looking forward to spending some time swimming, since the heat and humidity are due to return. If Rudi’s up to a movie after his long bike ride (he’s leaving at 6 a.m.), I have a dvd or two we can pick from. If not, I have my book to read.

Sunday, I’ll hit the farmer’s market for some apricots, plums, and raspberries and possibly the season’s first corn. Dad and I will spend some time on the phone, and I’m hopeful the Mets will give us some good plays to discuss between now and then. I might also make some pancakes, since blueberry season is really the only time of the year, I enjoy eating them.

How are you hoping to spend this weekend?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. One adventuresome duckling is reunited with its siblings and mama.

2. The new members of our volleyball team seem nice.

3. I forgot a bike lock, but really want to run into a shop. Some GW students watch it for me.

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

I’m feeling very meh about the book I started in print last week. There are some pretty major stressors in my life right now, so I can’t tell if it’s just that, if I need to give myself another 25 pages to let the story get going, or if, despite several other people telling me it’s good, it’s just not the right book for me.

And with all those other stressors, it feels very irksome to have the thing I like best as a stress reliever to be demanding additional brain power and attention.

Just be easy, reading, at least for the rest of this month!