Apologies for not doing a better job of clearing off the chair before taking a picture of my knitting, but I’ve been sick (not COVID), and I wasn’t being especially observant.

At the halfway point of the Tour de France, I’m about halfway through the number of rows in Reyna. While the pattern says to block it somewhat aggressively when done, the shawl seems small at this point, but that can be hard to tell. I still have a good-size ball, but the shawl will start eating yarn from here on out. Also, the pattern seems less to break up my variegated yarn and more to cause it to flash, which while interesting, isn’t necessarily what I was looking for. It’s fine and I may love it yet. I don’t not love it currently, so I think that’s probably okay.

Reading-wise I’m not really concentrating on any one book, except maybe my Agatha Christie novel. I have a pretty good idea of whom the bad guy is, but I still have about a third of the book left to go to figure out what his deal is.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what others are reading and crafting.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl is a little open ended, inviting us to consider books for our younger selves. However, what I want at the end of a long weekend is simple and concrete (although I kept having to expand my parameters to get to 10, so I failed). Here, then, are ten books that were published before I left middle school that I liked as an adult and probably would have loved as a kid:

1. The Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper: Adolescent and teen me would have loved the moodiness of this series.
2. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin: This caper is great for any age, but I would have loved it when I was in elementary school.
3. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson: I read Paterson’s teen novels and come up with no reason for why I skipped this one, but I had a penchant for melodramatic death novels as a kid.
4. The Neverending Story by Michael Ende: I liked the movie a lot.
5. The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden: I haven’t read this novel about a Romani orphan with a 21st-century lens and don’t remember enough about it to know whether it would be considered offensive by today’s standards. But when I read it in 2001, I loved it and know my younger self would have as well. (I enjoyed several of her doll books as a kid.)
6. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster with illustrations by Jules Feiffer: I discovered this fantasy novel when I was in college, skivving off from class in the stacks of children’s books housed between my classroom door and the restroom.
7. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg: This is another book I didn’t discover until college, but this time thanks to my friend Rebecca.
8. The Tales of Magic series by Edward Eager: My bff, Karen, gave me the first few novels of this series when I moved away to D.C.
9. The Swallows and the Amazons series by Arthur Ransome: This is a series that just didn’t get the attention in the U.S. that it should have (or maybe it had fallen out of favor, although I don’t see them in used bookstores like I would expect to if that had been the case) until after the first couple Harry Potter books were published.
10. Matilda by Roald Dahl: Charlie made his rounds in my sixth-grade class, but this book-loving, butt-kicking girl arrived just a little too late for us.

How about you? Are there books that were around when you were a kid that you didn’t get to until years later?

My garden plot was all cherry tomatoes and bunching onion flowers and budding milkweed, which was fine, but I wanted something more, so I headed out yesterday with the intention of bringing home new plants.

The only problem with buying new plants is that then you have to plant them! (more…)

I didn’t really notice tonight’s sunset, but last night’s was particularly stunning:

Another weekend, another list of things I’d like to accomplish…

Tomorrow the Capital Weather Gang has given D.C.’s forecast a 10/10. I’d very much like to spend as much of it outside as possible. The rest of the weekend also looks lovely.

I’m thinking a trip to one of D.C.’s nurseries is in order. As I said to Rudi earlier, the mid-Atlantic still has at least three months of growing time left this year. Everything was shut down when I planted in the spring, so I was using seeds I had on hand (I had many packets of peas…) and what I could get at the farmers market. Now, though, I need some more chard seeds. However, I will wait another month before I put kale back in my plot, since the harlequin beetles have wreaked havoc in our region this year and maybe they’ll fly south if we don’t replant too soon. I’d also like some fall flowers, since my echinacea are wrapping up for the season.

Rudi and I need to send some mail this week. I probably won’t get it all sent over the weekend, but I can maybe get it prepped. Also, has anyone seen what I did with my Forever postcard stamps?

I haven’t gone out on the bike in weeks, so maybe I will get up in the morning and ride someplace to pick up lunch. Maybe Sarah is around and would be interested in the Pretzel Bakery… Or I could get a vegetarian Cuban sandwich. Or a mango and papaya Indonesian salad… Regardless of where I go, I should remember to inflate my tires before I haul the bike up the stairs.

We did not get ourselves moving early enough to get pizza tonight, so that’s definitely on this weekend’s agenda. As is the usual trip to the farmers market.

Reading and knitting in the park are both on tap. It was packed up there tonight.

We need to watch the last episode of Endeavour before it goes behind PBS’ paywall. I wonder if our laptop batteries will let us watch up at the park…

I need to do some baking and make a new batch of ice cream. Both those things should be accomplished later in the weekend, when I’m tired of being outside, or at night.

I’d like to find my copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in French, since I’ve been studying again. The advantage to already knowing the story is that it should help me with the vocabulary not otherwise covered in my app tutorials. (For some reason they don’t think “goblin” or “magic wand” are likely to be needed on my next trip to Paris or Montreal.)

I really need to bring some semblance of order to the Burrow. I don’t want to waste my long weekend working on that, but maybe I can get my first bag of stuff to donate to Goodwill out the door and put away all those work shoes…

What’s on your long weekend to-do list?