Home Gear: TenthousandVillages.com

Today I told the story of the salad dressing server. Well I found the one I was looking for on TenThousandVillages.com. TTV is a site that focuses on bringing gifts made in delevoping countries to you via "fair trade." Fair trade likely sounds like rubbish to me (if someone made it and sold it willingly, isn't that trade fair?) but that doesn't diminish the usefulness of the site.

I got this condiment holder that was hand made in Chile (not exactly a poor country, by the way). It is great and works fantastically for serving the salad dressing. It's just the right size, nicely made and extremely cute. A steal at $14. It won't match my dishes from Rosanna, but it'll match some brown and green dishes I got in Japan.

I also picked up these bookends which I am also happy with, but I don't think were such a good deal. Who's fair trade being fair to when I'm paying $30 for these pieces of rock?