I’m joining Kat for her weekly Unraveled Wednesday:

As I showed yesterday, my current knitting is Fée Dragée, which I think of as my “Go, go, Gryffindor!” socks, even though my gold is technically a peachy orange when not rammed up against red yarn.

My reading is a little all over the place right now, but in a good way, I think. My fantasy chunkster is Laini Taylor’s Strange the Dreamer, which is significantly overdue at the library and which will start accruing late fees if I don’t return it this weekend. My historical fiction, which I just started tonight, is Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow. It’s probably not something I would have picked up on my own (although I probably added it to TBR mountain when it came out), but it is routinely cited by my book group as a favorite, so I figured I’d give it a shot. The first couple chapters were funny, in a wry sort of way, so I’m hopeful even though adult novels wherein a protagonist must stand up against an oppressive regime usually end poorly. The slight book next to my sock is Beastgirl and Other Origin Myths, by local poet Elizabeth Acevedo, which I treated myself to on my birthday and which I have tucked into my knitting bag. She has a new YA novel out this week, but I want to finish her poetry collection before moving on. Finally, in my ears I have Ta-Nahesi Coates’ latest essay collection, We Were Eight Years in Power. I’m up to year four and have not yet canceled my hold request for the print copy, because I think I might want to read certain sections (such as tonight’s on the Civil War) with my eyes, where I can better process and retain information I want to refer to later.

How about you? Are you reading or crafting anything interesting?

Every spring for years now I’ve taken part in Sock Madness, a competition where knitters from around the world strive to knit a sock pattern faster than one another. Except it’s slightly more complicated than that in that it involves six rounds and teams and probably some other stuff I’m not thinking of. The first round is a play-in type round and you just have to be able to complete the first pair in two weeks’ time in order to advance. I haven’t managed it in at least two years. Maybe three. But this year I’m feeling it and this is my progress after half a week. I haven’t been dedicated to knitting Fée Dragée when I should (in part because of some lingering doubts about color combinations, size, and my ability to read a perfectly clear pattern), so I could be further along than I am, so I have hopes that sock #2 will fly by. But this is sock #1 (and a very patient Corey), so I shouldn’t count chickens.

This weekend included wrestling with my grandmother’s ancient Eureka vacuum to figure out how to get the brush roll out to replace the belt. I thought I’d broken it when I accidentally released the first wire that held it in place, but luck was on my side.

I made it to the tabling section of the urban gardening conference yesterday, even if I didn’t make it to any of the sessions, so I came home with several bulbs and a bunch of seed packets. Now I just need to get myself back down to the garden to wake my plot up for the season.

I did a lot of reading and some knitting and I’m now feeling more confident than I was that I’m actually following the pattern correctly. Sometimes you just need to trust the pattern and give it time to develop.

How was your weekend?

(Taken last Sunday.)

Today we had a significant wind storm, which knocked over trees and out power all over the area. My power lines are below ground, a luxury that means I’ve only rarely lost power in the 15 years I’ve lived here, so I just got a day off from work to hang out at home all day. It was quite excellent.

In addition to “Take a three-day weekend,” which wasn’t originally in my plans, I’m hoping my weekend includes:

• Heading to the library to pick up holds.
• Stopping in at the local urban gardening conference.
• Shopping at the member sale of my favorite bookstore.
• Doing laundry.
• Playing my ukulele.
• Making cookies.
• Going to the farmers market.
• Planting my peas. (I may put that off until next weekend…)
• Working on my Sock Madness sock. (I’d like to be through the gusset decreases by Sunday night.)
• Vacuuming.

What do you hope your weekend includes?

D.C. is dealing with a significant wind storm right now and as I sit here writing (and listening to recycling bins skitter down the street), I wonder how much of the tree outside our apartment will come down before it’s over. But since I have no control over that, let’s look back at three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The Closing Ceremony of the Olympics in PyeongChang was very impressive. I particularly liked that spirograph act with the lines.

2. Spring is coming because we got an email about our baseball tickets today and I expect another about the garden this weekend. (I went down to the our plot last week to assess how things are going and think I’ll try to get peas in the ground in a week or so.) Also, Sock Madness kicked off today, so I know the seasonal shift is right around the corner.

3. Rudi got up this morning and went out to buy a bag of day-olds at our local bagel shop while I was still curled up asleep so there would be something to eat for breakfast.

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