100% cotton sheets usually feel nice and breath well, but they get wrinkled easily. 50/50 poly/cotton don't get wrinkled, but they tend to feel kind of clammy in the summer. The bamboo that meara mentioned is pretty cool -- feels almost like silk, and supposedly it's a good option, environmentally, because bamboo can grow back really quickly, but I don't know all the details of how true that claim is.

Beech (modal) feels nice too. It's my fabric of choice for pillowcases.

Ooh, and bamboo is cool, these days.

I've slept on bamboo sheets and now covet them.

oh sara, I got the official email that our Congressman passed us over for tickets. So, we will be watching from home, or more likely, Tivoing.

Oh, having grown up with a front yard in which my Dad A. tried to have a zen garden theme and B. made his children do all the yardwork, I can say with authority that bamboo grows really really REALLY fast.

Scrappy, you just reminded me of when my parents tried to grow a tiny, bonzai-sized Japanese garden. There was bamboo in it, and yeah, it grew quickly.

Bamboo is mostly environmentally sound. But there are assholes who clear cut old growth wild bamboo instead of cultivating, and that is horrible for the environment. How you make sure the bamboo fabrics you buy are not grown that way, I don't know. Maybe I'll "Ask Umbra" over at Grist. [link]

Oh, I have a regional dialect question. I just saw Nikki Giovanni speaking and she talked about having grown up in Cincinatti but she pronounces it Cincinattah (uh?) is that a generational thing

It *might* be a generational thing, but I hear people of all ages say it. And my automatic response is: much like Missouri, Cincinnati ENDS IN A GODDAMN "I," NOT AN "A"!!!

Ahem.

I don't get it. I like Nikki Giovanni, though. Hometown girl makes good.

Supposedly anything more than about 400 is actually bullshit, Tom.

I heard 300. (You pick these things up on the streets.)

She was great.

Scola, the New York Times did a shopping article on sheets recently that talked about thread count: [link]

In fact, he advised, “Once you get beyond 400 threads per square inch, be suspicious.” The standard for counting is to add each warp (vertical) and filling (horizontal) thread per square inch. The most that normally fits, he said, is 400, after which the threads are thinner and weaker. Some companies use two- or three-ply threads and multiply the count. “An 800-thread-count sheet made of two-ply yarn should legitimately be relabeled as 400,” he said. “That’s how you get 1,000 threads per square inch: creative counting.”

In the slide show there's some recommended bedding at BB&B.