And yarn acquisition

On, just briefly, to check e-mail. (Just to make sure there's no Bad News I have to prepare for. Well, there's some, but it's from a different quarter, it's not what I was dreading).

It was a good day even if I got lost getting to the shop - it had been a year since I'd been there, I turned too soon, and couldn't find either Loop 281 or route 259. At one point I pulled into a church lot, it looked like they were having some kind of a program, with the thought of asking directions of a parishioner. I texted Laura first to let her know I was lost and would be late. Then, as I was about to get out of the car to ask someone, I realized: they're all in dark clothes. Oh, there's a hearse over there. Yeah, not cool to ask directions of someone at a funeral....

But I managed to find Loop 281 and get to the yarn shop, and not terribly late.

I did acquire three project's worth of yarn:

Kureyon sock in one of the typical odd Kureyon color combinations (acid green, tan, and pink) for a scarf/shawl thing in Free-Spirit Shawls

Some pretty amber alpaca sock yarn, probably for socks, even though alpaca wool socks border on being too warm for here.

And Lustro yarn in a really pretty "burnt yellow" (a brownish goldish yellow - not a harsh yellow, which looks ill on me) for the Heliopath vest in the Harry Potter knitting issue from IK. Yes, I may regret choosing a halo-ey yarn for something with cables AND dropped stitches, but I kept going back to the yarn and looking at again after every time I told myself, "No, it's unsuitable for what you want it for." Well, we'll see. Even if the cables don't show up as well it's still a pretty color. And a different color from the brown/green/purple shades of my usual choosing.

We also went to Barron's for lunch and a little shopping (They have, sadly, closed out most of their books; I suppose they feel they cannot compete with the Books a Million down the road). I did buy an Eric Carle board book called something like My First Word Book (a very-early-learning-to-read sort of book) for my niece. (Yes, she's only 1. She'll grow into it.) I think that's probably part of the duties of an aunt - to help keep the child in books.

They were also closing out some books-on-CD, I got a Naxos several-CD version of "selections" from the Diaries of Samuel Pepys." I've always wanted to read them (I have read bits and pieces, like some of his Christmas entries, that were in other compilation volumes), so this might ease me into it. (It was like $6 and is read by a British Shakespearean actor with whom I am not familiar but who is probably good).

(And I thought this evening as I was putting it away: "If there were a Diaries of Samuel L. Pepys, it would be similar, but with more curse words." My brain does stupid stuff like that sometimes.)

We also ran to the Books a Million, to my joy they had the newest Simply Knitting (UK), which has the Alan Dart Christmas Unicorn pattern in it. No, I may never make it (it's more a "La Licorne" unicorn than anything approaching Twilight Sparkle, and Dart's patterns are notoriously complex), but I wanted it, just in case.