Three beautiful things from the week after Thanksgiving:

1. Dad sends me home with Eric Clapton, Monkees, John Legend, and Ingrid Michaelson Christmas cds.

2. Rudi was covering ski racing in Vermont last weekend, which meant we were not driving home Sunday night when the Delaware Memorial Bridge, one of the major north-south bridges on the Atlantic seaboard, closed for six hours due to a chemical spill. It was major enough that my brother, who lives in Los Angeles, heard about it on the news.

3. Jeremiah, our shy senior citizen cat, came out for the pet sitter, at least by the end of our time away. He texted me a photo to say he’d won Jer over with food and “pleasant banter.”

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

I’ve been feeling a bit unbalanced and realized that might be because I haven’t done a lot of knitting or reading lately, so this evening after Rudi went to bed I did both. I pulled out the long-lingering shawl, ripped back the partial bind-off I’d done and redid it. I don’t love the way it looks, but I’ve decided that I’m unlikely to not wear it because of that, so have forged on ahead. I still have 200 ever-shortening rows to go, though, so I’m not sure I’ll get it bound off before the end of the month, but probably before next week.

Reading wise, I managed the first essay in fellow Camel Sloane Crosley’s Look Alive Out There, which was about the dysfunctional ways urban neighbors become entwined in each others’ lives, while up in Connecticut, and I’m looking forward to the rest.

I can’t seem to force myself to open The Muse of Nightmares right now, so I’ve returned to The Alcatraz Escape, which has been in the works nearly as long as my shawl. I’m also finishing the final two chapters of Sam and Ilsa’s Last Hurrah on audio. I’m not loving it, which is disappointing, but it’s probably a good book to read right now, all about leaving one’s comfort zone and finding new adventures. Both of those seem likely to be done before the weekend, which is good, because right now things leaving my apartment is a big goal of mine.

Hopefully next week a whole slew of knitting and reading!

(Head over to As Kat Knits to see what everyone else has going on the needles and the page.)

My holds list at the library tends to get out of control in December and January as best-of lists begin to appear, but this year stress has moved the needle to near-full earlier than usual. I haven’t hit the 25-item request limit yet, but will soon if I’m not careful, particularly because three of the items are still on order.

Here’s what I’ve requested from the library:

• Tana French’s The Witch Elm
• The Friend, by Sigrid Nunez
• The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, by Jeffrey C. Stewart
• Flights, by Olga Tokarczuk
• The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge, by M.T. Anderson
• A Treasury of African American Christmas Stories, edited by Bettye Collier-Thomas
• Kate Milford’s Ghosts of Greenglass House
• Donald Hall’s Christmas at Eagle Pond
• All Summer Long, By Hope Larson
• T. E. McMorrow’s The Nutcracker in Harlem
• The Emissary, by Yōko Tawada
• A.J. Pearce’s Dear Mrs. Bird
• Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi
• Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black
• Allie Rowbottom’s Jell-O Girls: A Family History
• Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing
• An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones
• There There, by Tommy Orange
• Becoming, by Michelle Obama (I’m also on the audio wait list, which I’d prefer, but I suspect neither will come through before the end of the year)

What have you put a hold on at the library?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic asks about our favorite non-romantic relationships in literature. I’ve opted for friendship over family in my list:

1. Harry and Hermione (Harry Potter series)
2. Lupin and Sirius (Harry Potter series)
3. Harry and Ron (Harry Potter series)
4. Anne and Diana (Anne of Green Gables series)
5. Jo and Laurie (Little Women — is this cheating, since we all know they should have ended up together?)
6. Mary and Colin (The Secret Garden)
7. The Walkers and the Blacketts (The Swallows and the Amazons)
8. Ove and Parvaneh (A Man Called Ove)
9. Agnieszka and Kasia (Uprooted)
10. Charlotte and Mrs. Watson (The Lady Sherlock series — to be fair, Sherlock and Watson are a fantastic duo in pretty much every iteration of the characters/stories)

How about yours? What are your favorite platonic relationships in books?

My folks went out to the town of Union yesterday to buy their Christmas tree. We tromped all over the farm hunting for a tree with branches strong enough to hold their heavy ornaments and soft enough not to prick fingers and in the Goldilocks range for size.

Finally we found an interesting one and decided that would be best:

This is a concolor fir. The branches seem firmer than most firs, and the needles long but not sharp. And it has a citrusy piney scent, which smells delightful.

I think my folks picked well, don’t you?

Wishing you a peaceful Sunday, whether it’s being spent on the road or at home. We have one more day in Connecticut before we head back down south & I’m looking forward to filling it with good memories.