There aren't many things in life that I hate more than being cold, so the end of summer is a very sad time for me.

But then I saw this scarf, and now I'm just praying for it to cool down. They come in grey, black and white, with both upper- and lowercase letters. And if numbers are more your thing, well, they've got those, as well.

The lovely scarves are from littlefactory.com, a design Web site with plenty of other neat things, but this is reason enough for me to love them.

And here's another example of why I need more designer-type friends: Book vases. No, not cases. VASES.

Designer Laura Cahill began making them from unwanted books, after she discovered the glue used to bind them makes books very difficult to recycle. Maybe publishing houses can stop destroying books, and start making pretty housewares, now.

(photo courtesy of littlefactory.com)