The first Thursday in December offers the opportunity for a holiday-themed spin to three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The young man outside Macy’s ringing the bell for Salvation Army has a rich tenor voice, which he uses to serenade passersby with “The Christmas Song.”

2. Over the summer in an excursion to my parents’ basement, I tracked down the cookie shooter templates that my grandmother had handed down to me when I still lived in Connecticut and it turns out that they went to my mother’s best shooter. So this year, instead of being stuck with the four shapes we’ve made do with years for our Christmas spritz cookies, we are able to branch out and add bells and poinsettias to our repertoire.

3. As Karen and I sit in a cafe sipping hot beverages, Santa Claus rides past on a fire truck.

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

Happy Thanksgiving!

On this fourth Thursday of November, I want to precede my weekly list of beauty with a note of thanks. I am extraordinarily lucky in my life. I have a family and friends who love me, good health, a comfortable place to live in a dynamic city, delicious food to eat, a job that lets me sleep at night, cats to cuddle, and hobbies I enjoy. I am so grateful for all of that and for so much more.

And I am also grateful for a place to record things that strike as beautiful. Here are three of them:

1. The new Harry Potter movie may be my favorite yet of the series. Seeing it opening night at the Uptown, D.C.’s old, one-screen cinema gem, with an enthusiastic, sell-out crowd was fantastic and just what it should have been.

2. Phillip texts a photo of his and Susan’s new wee son, Holden. Adorable!

3. Our drive to Connecticut last night was absolutely traffic-free. We even avoided the back-up at the Delaware toll with a quick hop off the highway that also gave us the opportunity to stop at Dunkin’ for hot beverages.

What about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this Thanksgiving week?

Wow! There’s only a week until Thanksgiving. Thirty-seven days until Christmas. Huh.

But before panic creeps in, let’s look back at three beautiful things from my week past:

1. The day I forgot my lunch and walked down to Pret for a sandwich, a new bakery was handing out free mini cupcakes.

2. The Tweed Ride was on Sunday. Rudi and I joined roughly 500 other cyclists sporting our fall finest to ride across the city. Costumes were colorful and dapper and elegant and it’s always so cool to see the penny-farthings and Pedersen bicycles that get brought out for these fancy-dress events.

3. Several weeks ago, Grey Kitten wrote on one of my TBT posts that the moon was beautiful and he wanted to share it with me. Last Friday it arrived in the post in the form of a breathtakingly beautiful book of photography and French poetry.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your life this week?

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?