Kitchen wear

Are you the sort of person who is hopeless at Christmas shopping because you keep seeing things you'd like for yourself? Then look away now, because I suspect you'll be quite taken by what I'm about to show you.

A couple of months ago I seemed to spend every Friday morning at a seaside cafe, en route to delivering whoever was staying with us that week to the airport. We had a stream of different visitors - all men - over the course of a month and I began to think that the waiting staff would start to talk - 'oh look, there's that woman again, with another new bloke'. But I digress. In between reassuring the guest of the week that there was plenty of time to get to the airport and making sure the Small Girl didn't make too much of a nuisance of herself, I noticed one of the waitresses was wearing an amazing pendant. It was a tiny knife, sharp-edged and glinting silver in the sun. I couldn't help myself and more or less chased her around the room to find out where it came from. "Oh, my boyfriend makes them,'' she said shyly, as if everyone was so lucky.

To cut a long story short(ish), I gave her my email address and her boyfriend, Tim, got in touch. He's since set up a website showcasing his work and is happy to do commissions. Come on, there must be someone you know who would like a doll-sized sterling silver fish slice earring (and the ladle looks amazing as a pendant) ...