BY CARMIA
One of the draws at Haifa's annual International Film Festival is the park in the Carmel Centre, which fills up with little booths selling lots of funky stuff. Admittedly, some of the products look a little too familiar already: the "I've-just-been-to-India" clothes and accessories, the Henna tattoos, and the cheap jewellery, for example.
But here's what I found interesting at the festival:
Udi (left) and his Israeli-invented Discovery ironing board cover which he so passionately demonstrated to me. Honestly, if I ironed more, I would buy it. I don't even know how to explain what that cover does, but it works. He had me stick my hand under it while running a hot iron over it; he left the iron sitting on it for a good few minutes; and he showed me how nothing falls off from it (like the shirt in the picture, hanging off its collar) and more neat tricks. He promised to email me the link.
Then I ran into "Hebrew Goat" (עז עברית), made in Kibbutz Hazorea. The Kachuta cheese below is said to have won 18 competitions,
while I was told that this cheese is the only "yellow" goat cheese (גבינה צהובה) in existence! I was urged to take a picture of it.
When I saw the product below, I just knew this had to be an Israeli invention. It was designed to replace the traditional "threading" method, which lots of Israeli women use to remove facial hair. It's a spring and works by trapping and pulling out the hairs between it. It was marketed under both the name "Spring" and "epi-face," which is a cute word play since most Israelis pronounce the word "happy" as "epi," which is short for epilate here.
Then, of course, there was "The Druze Woman Who Bakes Pita with Za'atar." But in order to appeal to as many taste buds as possible, she not only offered the traditional Labaneh cheese as a topping, but also hummus and chocolate spread.
I also met Asaf Elazary, a student at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. His T-shirt, "Suck My Shmok" (top right), was just one of the original designs he was selling for 40 NIS a piece.
Lastly, I discovered some very young entrepreneurs selling home-made lemonade and magnets for modest prices of 2-3 NIS.
The film festival will wrap up on 10.10.09.
3 comments:
The ironing board cover looks very useful but as you feared, it is hard to figure out how it works. You put the shirt on top of the cover or underneath? I can see that if you put it on top and the shirt sticks nicely to the cover that it could be really easy to iron then (without worrying about the shirt moving and folds developing). I wonder if they could market it in America.
So did you try the cheese?
The shirt goes on top of the cover, and then it NEVER falls off... it's almost magic. Same with the iron... he tilted the board very steeply with the iron on top, which never budged. You can also leave the iron on the cover itself and it won't burn. And the best part is the buttons... you iron the other side of the shirt and the buttons kind of sink into the foamy cover, so that you don't even feel them as you glide over them... and it's enough to iron just one side of the shirt, as the ironing board cover heats and flattens the other side simultaneously somehow... but enough, I sound like a commercial.
I inquired for a friend about marketing it abroad, which Udi said was already being done...
The cheese was good, but unfortunately I can't afford to buy cheese at 170 shekels a kilo...
That ironing board invention is really cool. I'd buy it, if I got to try it first.
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