I stopped by the tail end of the Friends of the Arlington Library book sale today and came away with six things: three Christmas items (two detective stories, including one whose author was, until recently, a mystery of its own, and a dvd of Emmett Otter’s Jug Band Christmas), a favorite childhood title, The Saturdays; a book by a favorite author (Fannie Flagg) that I hadn’t yet read; and a children’s book called A Book Dragon, which I bought solely for the title.

The total bill for the bunch came to $2.25. Not a bad haul, eh?

Do you like to partake of library book sales, and, if so, do you have any favorite finds?

Today was a day for rest and relaxation.

I slept in and finished my book.

I soaked in the sun and did some knitting.

We went out for pizza and ate homemade cookies for dessert.

It was a good day.

April has arrived, as has its first weekend. It’s supposed to be comfortable and dry, if not actually sunny. Here’s what I’m hoping it includes:

• Try my hand at macarons. I made them once several years ago and they were not my biggest success. Over Christmas and my birthday, Mum got me set up with a pan, fun food coloring, and a cookbook, which I’ve now perused. Keep your fingers crossed they turn out less … flat … than last time!
• Check on my garden. Maybe I’ll have to put in supports for the peas!!!
• See Shazam!
• Head to Virginia for a library book sale.
• Put together a bag for Goodwill. Volleyball shirts keep falling on my head every time I open my closet door, which means it’s time to send some of them away.
• Visit a friend. His home remodeling is complete and he’s invited folks to stop by to check it out.
• Finish my book.
• Listen to some baseball.
• Reorganize our hallway closet. We need to empty out the car and reshuffle our seasonal items (no more need to have my ice skates accessible, but the portable hammock might be a plus!), both of which means taking a look at what is actually taking up space in our non-clothes closet. I’m hoping there’s an untapped air pocket in there. (That is actually possible, since I used to have a gigantic clothing bag in there that’s no longer being used.)
• Enjoy the cherry blossoms and maybe the fireworks celebrating them.
• Send out some birthday cards. (This also means figuring out where my stamps are hiding, since I don’t want to have to keep using my Snowy Day stamps now that it’s spring!)
• Eat pizza.

How about you? What are you hoping to do this weekend?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. There is a mini golf course at Hains Point — the oldest continually operating miniature golf course in the U.S., dating back to 1931 — that Rudi and I had never tried before. As we biked around looking at the cherry blossoms, we noticed it was not especially crowded, so we paused in our perusal to putt a round. We played 21 holes, because there was a family with small children ahead of us that we caught up to on the final hole, so we told them to take their time, since no one was behind us. The other benefit of there being no one behind us was that it allowed me to play my favorite version of mini golf, which often involves my ball gaining some altitude and speed and which is decidedly less safe and fun to play when others are around. Rudi was impressed when I sent a ball careening off the course and then, instead of taking the penalty shot and dropping it back onto the green, I chipped it back on. (I had to eventually take the penalty shot for the one that ripped into the (deserted) picnic area, because the curb to get back onto the hole was higher there.)

2. A friend emailed with very exciting news.

3. We got to our first baseball game of the season on Saturday, a gorgeous bluebird of a day, with a slight breeze off the river and temperatures in the 70s. The Mets got on the board early with three runs in the top of the first inning and kept adding to their total, but the Nationals regularly nibbled away at their lead, keeping the game interesting to us until the final out in the bottom of the ninth guaranteed the Mets their surprisingly fraught victory.

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

I picked up a new book at the library earlier this week — Deanna Raybourn’s A Dangerous Collaboration, the latest in the Veronica Speedwell mystery series. Set in Victorian England, the series is a gender bending homage to Sherlock Holmes, although Speedwell’s Holmes is far more equaled by Stoker’s Watson than is usually the case. This addition to the series is set on an island off the Cornish coast and features a castle with a poison garden. I’m sure we can all see where this is going to go. And I’m excited for it to do so.

I’ve been in a reading slump recently, so the area around our couch is currently littered with books that I’ve dipped into, expressed interest in continuing, and then put aside for something new, which also fails to snare my attention fully. Less than 24 hours after starting this book, though, and I’m past the treacherous waters of the 50-page mark, so I’m hopeful.

I have also been carrying on with Ladee Hubbard’s The Talented Ribkins and Questlove’s Creative Quest on audio. I’m narrowing in on the halfway mark for the former, which remains both interesting and vague, as our septuagenarian narrator is slow to reveal important details from the past to his niece and his readers. The latter audiobook is fine, and Questlove just revealed the importance of the Stevie Wonder episode of The Cosby Show to many of our now middle-aged hip hop pioneers.

I did not get caught between sock #1 and sock #2 for my stripey stockinette pair. This is the first second sock of 2019, so it’s a pretty momentous knitting occasion for me. I’m hopeful we’ll be able to carry on quickly through. And I just have the toe of the first of my Smock Madness sock to finish before moving on to the second one of that pair, as well. Progress on my shawl has stalled, but it has been suggested to me that if I complete some major item on my to-do list that that feeling of accomplishment might carry me through some of the other tasks, so I may put some energy into wrapping it up. Plus, we’re getting into the weather where I can start going out with just a tshirt and shawl into the evening, so this would be a perfect time to get it off the needles and onto my shoulders.

Want to see what other people are reading and crafting? Head over to As Kat Knits.

I happened to have an event I was heading to yesterday evening down at the Wharf, which is right across the harbor from Hains Point. I’d hoped to check out some of the cherry blossoms, dock my bikeshare, and then take the jitney across, but there were no docks to be had, so I had to forego my admiring of flowers in order to keep biking to my end destination.

But before I did, I thought to take a couple of photos from the date deemed this spring’s Peak Bloom:

We had some rain this evening or I would have gone back then. I may try again tomorrow afternoon or may wait and go on Thursday instead. It should still look lovely through the end of the week, when there will start to be more petals on the ground than on the trees and when the leaves start taking center stage on the cherry trees.

I’ve heard the Arboretum’s cherry tree collection is quite lovely and they’ve really been pushing it this year to the locals as a less-crowded, longer-lived alternative to the Tidal Basin area. I may bike over there one day, particularly since I’ve never been, or I may wait until next month when their azaleas are apparently something to be marveled at.