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December 14, 2004
The Better Mousetrap (Christmas edition)
So there was a big pile of Krinner Christmas Tree Stands in Homebase. "oh, yeah, that's a no-brainer", said Steven. It works just as described; open ratchet, insert tree, ratchet up levers, let go; total elapsed time about 8 seconds vs. 10 minutes or so for old tree. You only save 10 minutes a year, but goodness, it was a stressful 10 minutes. It also looks loads smarter than our old tree stand (and in fact smarter than the tree skirt we had covering the old tree stand). As for the tree, this year we have a Fraser fir, which smells divine, looks the right shape for a Christmas tree, and has branches strong enough to hang ornaments on and sparse enough that there's room to. On all these points it compares favourably with the incomprehensibly-popular-in-the-UK Nordman fir; we will have to see how the needle drop is.
Posted by Alison at December 14, 2004 04:32 PM