When I was ten-ish...and a bit of a tomboy...I finally persuaded my mother to buy me a pocket knife (after months of pleading I might add). True, it wasn't quite the hefty blade of steel that I'd envisioned...it was a vintage pocket fruit knife whose cutting edge was probably only a little over an inch in length. But it was a knife...and I'd managed to break through the barrier of parental "you'll cut yourself"'s...so it was a victory in childhood terms.

As I sat in bed that night using my new acquisition to peel an apple (admittedly not that adventurous but it was, after all, a fruit knife and I was hungry) I managed to cause very little damage to the apple...but stick the knife into the fleshy part of my palm. Blood flowed...the apple fell off the bed...and the death knell sounded on my desire for a blade. I don't know what happened to that little knife...which is a shame as it was decorated with mother-of-pearl and would have been ideal to use as a pendant...like the ones that pleats have in their etsy store. Though the folks at pleats have also salvaged vintage pencils and other ephemera it's the pocket knifes that will have a soft spot in my heart...and, potentially, some other part of my anatomy if I'm not careful.