Three beautiful things from our past week:

1. We spent the afternoon on Assateague Island, home to one of the wild pony herds in the U.S. We went camping at Assateague/Chincoteague about five years ago and I hadn’t seen any ponies, although Rudi had encountered them while out on his bike. So I was delighted that several of the ponies were out next the roadside as soon as we came down on their side of the bridge.

2. The day was overcast and a little cool and drizzly, with the water warmer than the air. The yellow flags were out indicating dangerous riptides, so I just stuck to wading. But the beach is the beach is the beach.

3. Somewhere along the line, Rudi and I have managed to spend 25 years together. He makes me tea every morning, sometimes even in the pot that he hates. He comes and kills/removes bugs when I ask him to (or screech), even if he’d been asleep at the time of the encounter. He gamely listens to hours of video when I get tired of having ear buds in and can probably give you word-for-word recitations of some of my patient testimonials at this point. He’s been party to the best and witness to the worst of my life for two and a half decades, and I am a lucky and better woman for it. Happy anniversary, Rudi!

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

Welcome to Wednesday, when it’s time to share what we’re reading and crafting.

Today I’m not doing that. I’m exactly in between that and am giving photographic evidence of that limbo:

Here we have Reyna, my Tour de France Knitalong project, off the needles. I still need to weave in my two ends and block it, but that’s what the weekend is for. I’ve not picked up another project to work on yet.

We also have Love Lettering, by Kate Clayborn, which I picked up at the library tonight. I haven’t started it yet, but might take it with me to the beach tomorrow.

Head over to As Kat Knits for the weekly roundup.

It really helps when you hit publish after writing a post…

While I sometimes share movie recommendations that I adore, I don’t often pass along tips for movies I see that I like.

Last night we watched The Big Year, which came out nearly a decade ago. The movie stars Jack Black, Owen Wilson, and Steve Martin as three avid birders, attempting to break the record for how many birds they can see in the U.S. over the course of a year. It also includes John Cleese as our David Attenborough-esque narrator.

I grabbed the movie back in March as the library was getting ready to shut down for the pandemic, desperately looking for something that wouldn’t be terrible to watch. But I was hesitant. Each of these actors is perfectly capable of greatness, but they also have a reputation for going over the top in some roles, which tend to leave me feeling detached from their movies.

I’m pleased to report that The Big Year is not one of those films. Each of the actors does a good job with his role — Wilson as the current record holder who has promised his wife that they can start a family, Martin as a retiring CEO whose wife sends him off to pursue his big dream, and Black as a divorced, mid-career programmer with modest savings and a father and boss who neither understand nor especially support his passion project.

The movie follows the men (and the cast of characters they meet again and again) over the course of a year as they range from a barely accessible outpost on an Alaska island to the coast of Texas after a hurricane with brief stops back home to sort out what’s going on there.

I recommend you look for The Big Year wherever you watch older movies.

It’s time for my favorite seasonal list this week at That Artsy Reader Girl — the top ten books on my autumn to-be-read list.

This fall, it’s a combination of new releases from old favorites, seasonally slanted books (spookier reads, Latinx characters, and political themes), and topical titles I’ve recently bought:

1. Murder on Cold Street by Sherry Thomas
2. Jasper Fforde’s The Constant Rabbit
3. Brandy Colbert’s The Voting Booth
4. The Night Country by Melissa Albert
5. Each Tiny Spark by Pablo Cartaya
6. Sandra Cisneros’ A House of My Own: Stories from My Life
7. Zadie Smith’s Intimations
8. So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo
9. A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
10. Aiden Thomas’ Cemetery Boys

How about you? What are you looking forward to reading this fall?

My Tour de France Knit-along shawl did not quite make the podium in Paris, in part because I wanted to get as close as possible to using up my yarn without actually running out. So I kept adding garter stitch rows. Then, I decided to change up the bind-off to a picot, and that just takes extra time because you’re casting on an extra 50% more stitches. But unless the yarn and my scale are in cahoots (and it’s 2020, so that totally seems plausible), I’m halfway done with the bind-off and less than half done with what was left in my yarn ball after my final row.

All this is to say that you’ll have to wait for a “pile of knitting without the needle” shot until tomorrow.

“Carried Me with You” is the song that plays over the credits of Onward, the latest film from Pixar. Brandi Carlisle, who sings it, wrote it with her bandmates, twins Phil and Tim Hanseroth.