I squeezed a lot into this final weekend of April.

I visited the garden, where seedlings are finally flourishing, where my peas have passed the cuff mark, and where I harvested both another bouquet of violets (I’m guessing I’ve got one more week in them, but we’re due for some hot weather that could kill them off) and my first strawberry (this came from one of the new plants).

I went to Takoma Park (an artsy neighborhood that straddles the D.C./Maryland border) and explored its shops and enjoyed its arts festival. This piece, by Chinedu Felix Osuchukwu, was in a coffee bar.

I did some shopping as part of Independent Bookstore Day, visiting two of D.C.’s indie shops. One of them, Solid State Books, is still awaiting completion of its permanent home’s construction, so is in a pop-up space for the moment. It was my first visit, but the staff was friendly and they had a nice selection of books, cards, and literary-themed gifts.

We watched Avengers: Infinity War, which I found disappointing. It had a very ambiguous comic book cliffhanger ending, and those are not my favorites in any genre. (That was not my only complaint, but the only one I can really share without spoilers.)

I did some of my commuting from far-off (you know, five miles away) neighborhoods by bike, since the days were mostly nice. Riding uphill into a headwind this afternoon was not the most enjoyable part, but I was able to think fondly of the gelato I was working off.

There was also reading and knitting and chores and tv, but those were definitely the highlights. All in all, a good weekend.

Today I took part in Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon. Because it was also Independent Bookstore Day and Watch the New Avengers Movie Day, I did not spend as much of the day reading as I might otherwise have liked, but I did finish Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward, begin Anna Meriano’s Love Sugar Magic, and read a few poems from Morgan Parker’s There Are More Beautiful Things than Beyoncé. I read a little more than 200 pages over the course of five or so hours.

But now it’s time to go to bed and get a few hours of sleep. There are things to do tomorrow, too, after all.

Here are some of the things I’m hoping this final weekend in April includes:

• Watching the new Avengers movie.
• Visiting the garden.
• Returning Sing, Unburied, Sing to the library.
• Cleaning out the fridge.
• Stopping in at the French Market in Georgetown or the arts festival in Takoma Park.
• Taking part in the Readathon.
• Visiting some of D.C.’s indie bookstores as part of Independent Bookstore Day.
• Spending some time on a bike.
• Eating spring vegetables.
• Knitting on my stripey socks.

How about you? What are you hoping to get to this weekend?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Over the weekend I saw three different people in fancy dress traveling on non-motorized wheeled vehicles — a fellow all in red (velvet hat, blazer, and white polka dotted pants) on a skateboard, a man in a kaftan and kufi on a bicycle walking his standard poodle, and a young woman in a sparkly embroidered salwar kameez and dupatta piloting her scooter down a hill near the Capitol.

2. The salmon dogwoods against a cloudy backdrop.

3. A gorgeous sunny afternoon after several days of clouds and rain.

How about you? What was beautiful in your world recently?

Sometimes when I find myself getting stuck in a reading rut, I opt to return to an old favorite. When I was young, it was Little Women or, less often, Anne of Green Gables. These days it’s the Harry Potter series. Because it is familiar in a comforting way, but no matter how many times I read it, I find something new in it, whether it’s because different details pop out at me or because I’m a slightly different person than I was the last time I read it.

As I said yesterday, I’m feeling stuck with my knitting. And, to be honest, none of what I’m currently reading has grabbed my soul either. So while yes, I do want to finish all the things I’m knitting and some of the things I’m reading (and need to do so soon in some cases), a change was in order.

I could head back to Harry, but the version I want to read now is the illustrated one, which does not lend itself to Metro reading. So I’ve picked up Down and Across, a book Jenn recommended last year and which I bought months ago after hearing the author read from it and which takes place partly in my neighborhood. I’ve completely abandoned Amelia Peabody (the thing I liked best about the book was the narrator; otherwise the story reminded me of an overly long Scooby Doo episode with about the same level of sophistication). Instead I’ve started Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale, which folks in my book group have compared to Uprooted, which I loved, and which I’ve enjoyed the first two chapters of tonight while washing dishes and doing some other nighttime chores.

The Harry Potter equivalent in my knitting world is stripey socks. And, yes, you would be right that the Posey socks are also stripey, but they are tinged with sadness, I think, and while I will definitely return to them — and not too far in the future — I needed something that made my heart sing with joy and that tonight was Knitterly Things’ Vesper Sock in In The Wild Wood, with stripes of verdant green, calming brown, and brilliant fuchsia. They are the colors of the azaleas that are coming into season right now and I think they’ll be just what I need to spring clean my soul and give it some space to return to other projects.

Sometimes it’s necessary to power through a problem, but sometimes it’s good to remind yourself that it might not really be a problem unless you make it one yourself.

Onward!

I finished Strange the Dreamer over the weekend, so I’ve returned to Sing, Unburied, Sing as my main book, since it needs to get back to the library this week in order to avoid a fine. Happily, it finally seems to have picked up its pace, so I think I should be able to read more than 10 pages at a time. I’m once again listening to Crocodile on the Riverbank, but am seriously considering abandoning it. If you like the Amelia Peabody books, please tell me why, because it feels like between the racism and the obvious bad guys that this book should fade into oblivion. And I read pieces of short stories from Kidnapped! Abductions in Time, Space, and Fantasy when I feel like sitting at my laptop for an additional ten minutes at a time.

You’ll notice no knitting in this photo. I’ve got nothing new to show. I’m stuck. Nothing interests me, except for the hat, for which I need to acquire the beads I want (rather than what the bead store has) in order to move forward. I know once I get past the heel with the Posey socks those should get me unstuck, but I admit that I’m contemplating just casting on a new pair of socks in the meantime. I know I’m feeling grumpy toward my knitting right now because my knitting is feeling grumpy toward me. Time will fix it all, I’m sure. If not, there’s no shortage of yarn in this apartment to try something new with.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what else folks are working on.