Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I bought a flat of strawberries on Sunday and got them all cut up and dealt with, which is a task, much like writing book reviews, that I prefer completed rather than in progress.

2. I was really impressed with how effortlessly fast this young woman was in the pool … until I realized she was twins.

3. A friend texted this week to say that she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer, but didn’t have anything other than an initial diagnosis. She followed up after her visit with the surgeon to say that it was early-stage cancer and that some more tests would be necessary before a final course of action could be determined, but that overall the news was very optimistic. As she is not the only friend I’ve had with breast cancer, I’m so grateful that we live in a time when treatments are so successful.

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

I’m going to rip out a few dozen rows on my shawl, I’ve decided. It’s been sitting in time-out while I considered my options, wondering if I was being too picky. Eventually I decided to consult Rudi. If he noticed, without much prompting, what the problem was, then back I should go.

And he did.

The problem is right there at the center “v” of the shawl, where it briefly, but rather abruptly, switches to orange. When I was lining up my leftovers, it didn’t seem like such a sharp changeover, but it is in real life. And if I’m going to have spent six years knitting a shawl, I should probably not include the bit I’m unhappy with at its most visible spot, right?

Luckily, I think that if I just rip back and excerpt that little bit of orange that it will fade much more in concert with the rest of the shawl. And hopefully it won’t cause me to run short of yarn. Keep your fingers crossed…

On the reading front, I’m reading Sandhya Menon’s From Twinkle, with Love, a YA romance featuring an Indian-American teen who wants to be a director. The novel is written in journal format, but as letters to famous female directors that Twinkle admires. In audio, I’m listening to one of this spring’s Audiobook Sync titles, Swing, by Kwame Alexander. So far, I’m finding it far more similar to his sports titles, which I loved, than his previous music-related book, Solo. Although to be fair, Swing combines a focus on music with a focus on baseball, so maybe this is the culmination of both. I’m also reading Grace Talusan’s The Body Papers, a memoir about immigration, abuse, and cancer, because I went to school with one of her siblings. I’m early in right now, but appreciate how hard it must have been for her to share her story with the world.

Want to hear more about what people are crafting and reading? Head to As Kat Knits for the roundup.

The weekend included feasting on daiquiris and ice cream, lounging at the pool and at the park, and watching movies and sunsets. The Burrow got neglected in favor of outside time, and that is how it should be for the first official weekend of summer.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic at That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to reflect on a decade’s worth of releases and to give our favorite book for each of the past ten years.

I should note that I started out considering the best book from each year, but then I realized it wasn’t the question and had to go back to my first couple to consider whether it was, in fact, my favorite. Here’s where I ended up:

2009: Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me
2010: Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
2011: Erin Morganstern’s The Night Circus
2012: A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman
2013: Just One Day by Gayle Forman
2014: Landline by Rainbow Rowell
2015: Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
2016: Sherry Thomas’ A Study in Scarlet Women
2017: Word by Word by Kory Stamper
2018: Julie Murphy’s Puddin’
Bonus: 2019: So far I’ve only read two of this year’s publications. The moment’s winner is Jeff Zentner’s Rayne and Delilah’s Midnite Matinee.

It does not escape me that my list is very white, with Sherry Thomas being the only author of color, I believe. As I mentioned, these are merely the books I enjoyed most, not necessarily the books I thought were most important or best written, which would mostly have resulted in vastly different lists that included books by Jason Reynolds, Angie Thomas, Kwame Alexander, Nicola Yoon, Jacqueline Woodson, Grace Lin, and Cristina Henríquez.

Rudi and I stopped by the local library branch yesterday, where I had a few holds waiting for me. It seems like all my red-spined requests came in at once…

We watched Ant-Man this evening. It was cute. I’ve started The Body Papers by Grace Talusan, a memoir written by the sister of someone I knew from college, and am trying to decide which fictional work to begin next. I’m thinking possibly one of the other books that would qualify for Asian-American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, which would be Emergency Contact; From Twinkle, With Love; and Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors.

What have you picked up from the library recently?

We have peas!

Also, I consulted all my seed packets. All the green ones I planted are English shelling peas. The purple ones are snap peas — and are so sweet. Their seam is green, as are the peas inside. We had them on our salads for supper tonight, which were based on greens from the garden. I picked enough leaves for us to have at least one more round of salads before we need to harvest more.

We also brought home a dozen strawberries, which were delicious with ice cream for dessert, and half a dozen onions/shallots.

And my potatoes are in the ground, so unless I find any more growing in my kitchen, we should be good to go.

I ought to get beans in the ground soon. And I might need a couple more basil plants, because the ones I’ve planted so far are looking a little scraggly, which is not the adjective you want to have to use for basil. I’ll see what I can find at the farmers market tomorrow.

Finally, a glimpse of a new crop to come next month:

Fava beans! (These are the Robin Hood variety, which grow on bushy plants only about a foot high, so I’m thinking the bean pods will be smaller at harvest than what I usually see at the farmers market, but who knows?!)