Comic and Yarns

It's hard to come up with a good title for really unrelated things, but other than going with "Items From Today," I'm kind of at a loss. So here are a few things that happened today!

I've mentioned before that my mother volunteers at a thrift store, so she brings home all sorts of things. Today, she brought me this:

"If you want it; I can always take it back." IF I want it? Like there's a question?

The colorful stuff is called Schachenmayr select Tahiti, and it's 99% cotton, light fingering weight, so another good hot-weather-knitting-experiment yarn. I'm trying to decide if I have enough to make a sleeveless shirt with it. I should probably swatch and see how it looks knit up, anyway.

The white is mystery yarn, no labels. It's a heavier weight, maybe DK? It's got a sort of halo, sort of sheen, that makes me think silk might be involved, and/or perhaps some mohair, or alpaca, or ... I really don't know. I put the question up in a Ravelry forum to see if anyone there can ID it from the picture, and someone suggested it could be Knit Picks Diadem, which is half silk and half alpaca, and looks promising! (I might just have to order a skein, in a good contrasting color of course, to check. For science.) It's nice and soft, and I imagine it would have a nice drape, maybe in a little shawl...

Also today, I looked into a comic that Mary Ellen told me about, Wallace the Brave, and it's great fun, so two thumbs up on that.

Also also today, I went to the library to pick up some holds, and continue to be far too amused/impressed that with their self-checkout machine, you don't have to scan each book individually; you put the stack in, and it beeps as it checks them all off for you. Technology is cool when it works.

While I was there, I heard someone call my name, to my considerable surprise. But I turned around and it was the librarian, holding up one of the books I had just returned, and asking, "Was it good?" Book people rock.