World news is not good tonight. But that doesn’t mean things aren’t without hope or beauty. Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I pet two puppies on Sunday. One was a tiny beagle nearly the same size as my brother’s favorite stuffed dog growing up and the other an already overgrown Newfoundland.

2. French bread pizza for lunch and leftover cheese fondue for supper.

3. A California teacher launched an art project with her elementary school students — a hotline offering words of encouragement. Calling 707-998-8410 gets you pre-recorded pep talks from kindergarteners, a recording of kids laughing, and more. It is exactly what I needed. (I’ve since heard that the response has been so overwhelming that it keeps crashing, but I understand they’re working on solutions.)

What’s been beautiful or hopeful in your world this week?

My phone ran out of juice, so rather than wait for it to charge a bit and getting a photo, I’m just going to give you a narrative update on the reading and knitting around here.

Sock Madness, the annual sock knitting competition commenced today. I have two weeks to knit a particular pair of socks, which this year includes two colors and cables. I’m not feeling super optimistic about my chances of finishing them, but I plan to give it the old college try. I have two skeins of yarn I’m feeling … okay … about combining, and I’ve knit the first row.

On the reading front, I’m reading Evie Dunmore’s A Rogue of One’s Own in print and listening to Stephen Spotswood’s Fortune Favors the Dead. I’m enjoying both, but because of the mental energy I’m spending on other parts of my life right now, it’s all just going more slowly than I’d like.

Head over to As Kat Knits for this week’s Unraveled roundup.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is Books I Enjoyed, but Have Never Mentioned On My Blog. I don’t know for certain that I’ve never mentioned them, but here are a baker’s dozen books I rated* as “excellent” or “very good” in 2001, according to my reading journal that year:

1. Night Flying by Rita Murphy: “The story of a unique young woman’s coming of age in a Vermont matriarchy … Debut novel — must read her next!”
2. High Tide in Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver: “Wow! What a goldmine! WOW!”
3. The Seer and the Sword by Victoria Hanley: “The story of Torina, a princess who must flee with only her life, and Landen, an enslaved prince turned bandit. Torina is master of her own fate — no princess in need of rescue, she!”
4. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri: “I really enjoyed this collection, although I wasn’t sure I would. I found the characters human and the struggles — although centered on the Indian-American experience — universal.”
5. The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden
6. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman: “Must read 2nd part soon!”
7. World of Pies by Karen Stolz: “Sweet, but not sickly”
8. Come to Me by Amy Bloom: “Would re-read”
9. Change Me into Zeus’s Daughter by Barbara Robinette Moss: “Semi-autobiographical tale of a woman growing up in the South in the 1960s”
10. Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede: “Particularly appreciated the sarcastic tone of the princess in her dealings with dumb princes. Also liked the pokes she took at the traditional fairy tale stereotypes.”
11. Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster: “If the ending was predictable by her freshman summer, the book was still enjoyable and her appreciation for educated, modern women quite refreshing. I also enjoyed the short bio about Webster in the epilogue. Might be interesting to read more about her.”
12. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich: “Very interesting story of the author’s attempts to find out how women survived after leaving welfare following the welfare reform bills of the late 1990s.”
13. Shiva’s Fire by Suzanne Fisher Staples: “The modern story of a poor Indian girl who, through fortune and innate talent, brings financial security to her family and happiness to herself. [Now I want] to see bharata natyam performed.”

There are a few books in here, like Roald Dahl’s The BFG, where I’ve given no rating, and I cannot see why. I suppose I wanted to sit with it a bit longer before committing.

* I rated books as excellent, very good, quite good, fair, and okay.

Unlike the previous two weekends, this one was just two days. Amazing how short that feels, particularly when the workweek feels so stressful.

But it was filled with lots of good things:

On Friday, Karen and I spent several hours on the phone. Yes, we saw each other just last weekend. That’s part of the magic of our friendship.

Saturday, I spent some time outside in Georgetown. Spring flowers are starting to bloom. I discovered a bakery I like in Virginia had set up an outpost in the neighborhood back in November without my noticing and that another had closed just last week. I knit a bit and read.

On Sunday, I headed to the farmers market, where I bought the ingredients for a gardener’s pie (which Rudi turned into a delicious meal for us tonight). Then I ventured down to Lafayette Park next to the White House for a rally in support of Ukraine. I got a lesson in flags of the nations that broke away from the Soviet Union, saw lots of flowered headbands and embroidered clothes, and was overwhelmed by what a large Slavic expat community there is in the area. As always, moments of song were the most powerful, with a group of mostly older women singing at the back of the crowd, and the Ukranian national anthem brought the crowd to their knees in unison. A college-aged woman sobbed through an interview, and I suspect (but was too far away to confirm) that she was worried about family back home. My heart breaks for those in danger’s way — and those in safety who can only wait to hear that loved ones have survived another day. It puts any hardships in my own life in stark perspective.

How was your weekend?