1. Teiwice this week I habve founds myself outside at dusjk. Omn ,Momhjm,nday UI caiught the a crescenyt miioon over Rsossluuyn from the Geotrgetown waterfront. Tonuight it was the last nubmiuiomevnts of coloor diasappearimmnhg from nbeyond ythe Baltuinbmiore GHarbotr.

[Ahem. This was typed with my left hand while balancing the roly-poly Corey on my lap and propping him up with my right. Obviously what it says is: “Twice this week I have found myself outside at dusk. On Monday I caught a crescent moon over Rosslyn from the Georgetown waterfront. Tonight it was the last movements of color disappearing from beyond the Baltimore Harbor.” Honestly, it was just too funny not to share the original after Corey freed up my right hand.]

2. Rudi joins me in Baltimore after work. While our pizza is not of New Haven quality, our cannoli (from Vaccaro’s, the same bakery that used to have a stand at D.C.’s Union Station) rivals Libby’s, which is the highest compliment I can pay to Italian delicacies.

3. Another knitter and I were exchanging emails and she happened to mention that one of the socks we’d made during last spring’s Sock Madness had really helped her finesse her grafting skills. After replying that that sock had been my undoing in the competition (yes, it was the first one; so what?) and that, in fact, it had been sitting on my desk untouched since March, I pulled out the baggie and tried the completed sock on. When I had put the socks away, I had been up all night on a cross-country flight trying to finish the pair, was exhausted, and was in Salt Lake where my allergies drive all my senses into overdrive. The socks had an unusual construction and I had felt seams bunching in uncomfortable ways in spots where that would be sure to cause blisters. After I failed to finish by the deadline, I shoved the socks into a baggie and figured I’d have to undo some grafting and maybe frog the socks some. Some day. But on Saturday I realized it had merely been my state of mind (and/or health) that had put these socks into time out. I took them out of sock purgatory and am on my way to a weekend completion of a new pair of socks.

What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

It’s a rainy November day with slow brain movements. But it’s also Thursday, which means it’s time for three beautiful things:

1. Instead of the sludge you often find at the bottom of a cup of cocoa, mine has mini chocolate chips.

2. Michael is our lone trick-or-treater, but his Aquaman costume makes him a welcome visitor. And his glee at the variety of candy I have picked up makes me happy.

3. Just when I think I’m out of handknit socks to wear on a chilly November day, I remember that I finished a pair over the weekend and that Monday night I found a pair that I’d finished over the summer when it was too warm to do anything but model them for a photo. (And, yes, that’s my new cue to do laundry…)

What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

As I write this Thursday night, a cool breeze is plucking yellowing leaves from our tree and sending them swirling into our brick window well. The cats are all very excited: Della is sitting in the upper window, staring down over the a/c unit. Jer is parked on the speaker, not quite wanting to get into the window itself. Corey is having the crazies, throwing himself around the living room — up into the window, then over to Rudi’s chair, then into the cat carrier, then back to the window. Posey, last I looked, was having some supper, only recently having emerged from her beauty sleep in the hallway closet, but Rudi notes that particularly loud drops of leaves cause even our most placid cat to look up.

Here are three beautiful things from the last full week of October:

1. Halloween decorations are out in full force. I have a strand of jack o’lantern lights above my desk. The neighbors have a neon green spider atop cottony strands on a bush. And when I arrive at work today, a sparkly green skeleton was lounging on the couch in our lounge with a container of chocolate for those brave enough to approach him.

2. I finally remember that in order to execute a spit splice in your knitting you have to part the strands of each end of yarn. It’s handy that my memory has finally recalled this piece of information as Corey has chewed through two spots in my stripey yarn. On the socks, you’d only notice the affected stitches now if you looked hard, and I didn’t waste a ton of yarn by having to find the equivalent spot in the next sequence.

3. On my ride west, a toddler warrior queen crosses my path in front of the White House and the spires of Georgetown stand before me framed in the fading colors of a fall sunset.

What beautiful things have you noticed this week?

[Written Thursday night] Our sites are down right now, so I’m writing this Thursday night (after a pleasant evening of knitting, baseball, and tacos with Rudi) and will paste it in when our service provider figures out what’s going on:

1. Della is clearly feeling better. She is not quite her old self, but if this is the new norm, we’ll be okay with that. She has energy, has felt up to jumping up to the upper window in the living room, and has been interested in food — both when it’s time for medicine and in between.

2. A trip to mail my swap package after work last week could have derailed due to a splitting, nausea-inducing migraine. But the postal clerk working the floor just before closing time is cheerful, the girls behind me in the snake-like line hold my space while I find a customs form, and the clerk at the desk suggests I switch my shipping method to save money and waits for me to fill out the new form.

3. We dig up the back corner of the garden, where we harvest about a dozen potatoes and a dozen peanuts. Sifting through the dirt makes me wonder if we’ll also find some gold dubloons.

It’s been a rough week here in the Burrow and I just haven’t really felt up to talking about it. But tradition is the sort of thing that shouldn’t be messed with, so here are the usual Thursday Three Beautiful Things from my week past:

1. It was obvious that Della was getting weaker and weaker and I confess that I spilled many tears both before and after taking her to the vet, anticipating from past experience that she would not be coming home. But with the help of a caring vet clinic, some fluids, and a number of medicines, we got a call Tuesday that said we could pick her up and bring her back to the Burrow. Rudi and I are not natural nurses, but we do love our eldest cat tremendously and she is forgiving of our awkwardness. The barrage of medicines doesn’t offer us forever, but they do offer us all some additional time together, which we plan to spend snuggling.

2. Crossing the Taft Bridge up to Woodley Park last night, I note that a few trees below me in Rock Creek Park are beginning to be tipped with yellow and one or two with red. The sun perches just atop those on the horizon before it slips behind them for the night.

3. I finish a knitting project and block it (stretch it out a bit to even out the stitches) on a dinner plate. It ends up looking as cool as I hoped it would, and my fingers are crossed that the recipient will like it, too.

It’s late, so we’ll mostly skip the preamble. Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. We have dinner with two high school friends of Rudi’s and their spouses. The friend who cooks dinner has two little girls, precocious and adorable. The older of the two girls, who’s seven, overhears us discussing the science of science fiction and asks for an explanation of tractor beams. When her mother is able to walk her through an admirable model that involved a tricycle, a jump rope, and a dump truck, I’m impressed. But when I remember Heather is a minister and chaplain at a local high school, I figure explaining Star Trek technology to a first-grader might be easy by comparison.

2. Rain is plinking down at bedtime a couple nights this week.

3. Jeans and long sleeves and knee highs and wool socks have made this week one filled with clothes I haven’t seen in a while.

What’s been beautiful in your world this week?