Ah, how I love the soap trees in autumn...

Staying at the Ritz-Carlton, I found myself looking through the Ritz-Carlton magazine (who knew?), where I saw these. They're single use soap leaves -- ultra thin slivers of fine soap, for just enough lather to banish the ick from your hands. Aren't they lovely? $20 for a box of 20.

Only Mother Nature could form soaps as beautiful as these Soap Leaves. ... Comes in packs of 20 honey-scented soap leaves in an acetate box perfect for gift-giving. Each leaf is good for one or two washings. Choose from Ivory and Green. Please note that as these items are handmade, please expect color and size differences between the leaves in each box.

Cormorant by Shriekback

Wow. This is really cool. Shriekback is a great band that most of you probably haven't heard of. Their new album, Cormorant, was recently released. And now they've just released a limited edition of 50 hand-painted USB "cormorant eggs," each containing the full album, plus four bonus tracks. I want one!

the cormorant egg -- £35.00

it's here at last!
a limited edition of 50 hand-crafted cormorant eggs that plug into your usb socket
each egg contains, in mp3 format, the whole of the cormorant album plus four bonus tracks, month of sand, thumbless, planet and nimbulus and a 20-minute interview with barry andrews
each one comes in its own straw-lined mini crate with a personalised shipping label, a set of coloured prints of the cormorant at lulworth cove, a certificate of authenticity signed by barry andrews and malicious damage, a complete lyric sheet and one of a set of 50 ways to look at a cormorant