Who doesn’t like a Swiss Army knife? We all have had them, lost them and then got another one. Weddings, company giveaways, grad gifts….They are the perfect utilitarian pal and fit so nicely in your front pocket + they’re disposable like a pair of cheap sunglasses. Sure, we don’t want to lose one but for less than $20 bucks a pop is it really going to kill you? Though I have seen grown men get quite testy when the TSA boys have to confiscate their trusted sidekicks.

So, it was a bit of a surprise when I came across the Fabergé, the Baccarat, the Roles Royce of pocket knives while perusing the Swiss Army web-site recently.  Swiss Army and the new luxury Swiss brand, Bonfort have teamed up to offer a $70,000 dollar freaking pocket knife. You will not be camping with this anytime soon. This partnership was actually born in 2004 near the height of the housing boom or when Wall Street hedge funders wouldn’t think twice about having one of these in their Brioni trousers. Doubt they are moving many now.

The shells are made of pure platinum 950 and inset with 430 dazzling diamonds bringing the total weight to close to 4 carats.

All of the tools included are engraved with diamonds too, except for the tweezers. You also get a solid gold or platinum chain and a Bonfort case.

For the lowley class they are also offering an 18K verison for $2,700.

In the mean time, I will be quite content with my Victorinox Farmer.

Ring in the new year with the plush feel of an authentic Greek flokati shag rug. I ran into my Greek friend Phil recently and asked him about his flokati rug biz. Besides his interests in hi-tech gadgetry, traveling and his constant fiddling with his motorcycle he has a couple of online web stores specializing in real fokati rugs and pillows.

What is a flokati rug you ask? Well, in the 1400’s the Vlach culture who resided in Samarina, a Greek village located way up in the Pindos Mountains, were big time sheep herders. Some had flocks upwards of 10,000. Naturally, come spring, they sheered the sheep and used the wool for rugs. What makes Phil’s rugs so special is that they are indeed hand-made in Greece using many of the same age old techniques. Each of his rugs are placed, for up to forty hours, in a soap/chemical-free whirlpool bath filled with water from canal-channeled mountain streams, and then emerges, not only clean, but decadently thick because water pressure has caused its pile to swell. The rugs are then hung up to dry naturally, and graded according to the weight of its wool. The heaviest, most luxurious flokati rugs weigh in at 4000 grams per square meter.

And, in spite of their thorough friction wash, flokati rugs never lose the lanolin that kept the sheep which provided their wool warm and dry, so they have a built-in defense against water-based stains. And some flokati rugs – the label will let you know – can be machine-washed on a wool setting; they must be air-dried in order to keep their woolen backing from shrinking.

Anyways, I told Phil I would blog about his two on-line flokati rug stores. If you mention “Selectism” he will throw you an extra 10% off anything on his sites. He has some decent ‘recession-proof’ deals going right now.

Flokati Rug

Shag – Modern Rugs