We are all about saving trees, but if you’d like to spread the good-n-green word by posting an Ideal Bite tip in a public place, we encourage you do so on recycled paper. Thanks and Happy Biting!

If 10,000 Biters buy locally produced gifts instead of nonlocal ones, we'll avert the weight of just over 1 million housecats in CO2 from flying into the atmosphere.

The earliest felt artifacts date back to 6,500 BC in Turkey. Later, Roman soldiers protected themselves from arrows with felt armor.

Curiosity Killed the Cat

The Bite:

...or maybe it made a stuffed one out of fabric scraps, duct tape, and safety pins. Snoop around the Curiosity Shoppe, and you'll find locally made DIY kits for everything from greeting cards and music boxes to kids' animal stitch kits (see photo) and radio receivers. The not-so-crafty can grab pre-made eco-gems such as Berkeley designer Josh Jakus's wine tote made from cast-off factory felt or a recycled-glass spiral pendant by SF's Julie Conway, who uses emission-free hydrogen to power her production process. To catch all of the trunk shows, artist demos, and rotating in-store exhibitions (now up: prints and drawings made from reclaimed materials by local artist Aurora Crispin), you may just need nine lives.

Wanna Try?

The Curiosity Shoppe, 855 Valencia St. (415-671-5384). Felt wine tote, $29.

View this tip online at http://www.idealbite.com/tiplibrary/sanfrancisco/curiosity_killed_the_cat

All editorial suggestions in this tip are the result of testing and a preference for the tip topic. No advertiser has paid to have its company referenced in the tip.