The World's Most Useless Invention

It's the season of golden and bloodred leaves. A truly beautiful season, were it not for one thing. The leaf blowers.

I've been wondering how this thing ever made it to mass production. As I was trying in vain to get some sleep this morning with leaf blowers terrorizing the neighbourhood, I amused myself by imagining the inventor selling the idea to some big shots with lots of money.

Inventor: "I've got this great new idea. A leaf blower!"
Big Shots With Lots Of Money: "..."
Inventor: "You can blow leaves into a pile!"
BSWLOM: "And then...?"
Inventor: "Then you can blow them into another pile!"
BSWLOM: "..."
Inventor: "It's... It's a cool machine! And it makes lots of noise!"
BSWLOM: "Oh wow we'll make millions!"

And thus my mornings in autumn-time came to be ruined by air and sound polluting leaf blowers, voted as the most useless invention in the world some years back here in Finland.

Plus to make matters worse, we had run out of coffee this morning. On its own this is enough to start up homicidal tendencies, then double that up with the leaf blowers... Fortunately Mr Morrgan saw the danger and rushed off to buy coffee as soon as he knew the situation. Mr Morrgan saves the day!

(The photo shows the huge maple tree in my parents' back yard. A fantastic-looking tree which unfortunately produces an equally huge amount of fallen leaves every year. But who cares! It's so pretty! And completely unpolluted sound-wise!)

A new/old obsession

Hello, obsession. I'd missed you.

About a week ago I had a sudden idea that wouldn't leave me alone. I just had to make a pair of fingerless gloves with a snake across the back of the hand. I did and they turned out awesome. But that wasn't the end of it. I had to make another, slightly different pair. And then another, and then a couple with entwined twin snakes. So within a few days, I had a pile that you can see to your right here. The result of an obsessed mind.

All of these pairs are different in not only their colours but their pattern and materials as well.

I suspect I'll keep on making different ones each time, it's just more fun that way.

So, if you see one you like, be quick! I've already listed my favourite pair, in such a beautiful beautiful green, in my Etsy shop and will be listing all of these these eventually.

Officially Travelled Out. But there's photos!

Phew. It's been pretty much a whole month of Not Being At Home, with just a few days in between of frantically shipping orders and repacking for a new trip. Three trips in a month is pushing it, but then again only one of these was planned in advance.

On the plus side, I have some photos! Very belated ones, if you look at my previous post. These are from the week-long, totally unplanned emergency trip to Boston. Despite the unplanned emergency part, it was good.

I'm officially Travelled Out for now. Now I just have to try to figure out what a normal life is supposed to look like again.

The obligatory American bagel.

It looked fun. I should have joined them.

A pretty part of a park in downtown Boston.

Yum yum yum! Moments later I managed to knock Mr Morrgan's drink to the ground. Oops. I got him a new one though.

Enjoying the Harvard campus.