The Suze and I spent some of our Saturday at the Bayou City Arts Festival in Memorial Park in Houston. For the most part, if you've been to one arts festival, you've been to them all: its all jewelry makers, photographers who all seem to have been out shooting in the same part of Italy during the same sunset, and creepy bearded dudes playing New Age-y versions of 80s pop hits on 16 string guitars. I went because it was outdoors in the Spring, and it was an excuse to eat a gyro sold to me by a man in a tent. I never intended to actually buy anything there.

So how did this guy end up in my house?

Well, the obvious answer is, because it is AWESOME. The creator of these guys, Fred Conlon, calls them Gnome-B-Gones, and he has a whole line of these characters he sells on his website, Sugar Post. Here's a little one for your fridge. Here's one with a baseball. And here is a freaky awesome spider.

Wondering what the hoop is about in the figure above? It's a wine holder!!

GLUG GLUG GLUG. Suzi got one for her desk at work, too. Well, not a wine one.

Here's the email I got the next day: "You know what's even better than putting a pen in his hand? EXACTO KNIFE."