Wise buys

Decorating covered: Sure Fit, the folks who give new life to worn furniture, have inched into bedding and window treatments and furniture in a Special Decorating Edition catalog mailed this month. Bedding includes duvet covers and shams in quilted suede, chenille and embroidered denim. Tab-top drapery panels will be available in suede, chenille, embroidered denim and corduroy with faux leather details. The company's furniture foray is a set of two Parsons chairs with maple or espresso leg colors for $198. The catalog can be ordered at (800) 305-5857 or accessed at www.surefit.com.

Shop talk

Fitted folding: Folding clothes as they tumble from the dryer is hard enough. But try folding a fitted sheet in a neat and tidy manner, and most launderers end up balling it up and shoving it to the back of the linen closet. Springmaid, the sheet experts, came up with this solution:

• Spread sheet with all edges folded in.

• Fold in half and flip two elasticized corners under two top corners.

• Smooth so it resembles a semi-circle (above).

• Fold in half horizontally.

• Turn over and fold into thirds.

• Fold into thirds again, this time lengthwise.

Now we just need the room big enough to spread out the sheet.

Cedar chest lock swap: Lane Home Furnishings is looking for as many as 38,000 cedar chests in Greater Cincinnati made from 1912 to 1987 for a free lock swap. The airtight chests, under Lane or Virginia Maid brand names, have locks that automatically engage when the lid is closed. They would like to provide new locks - safer for children - that are engaged by hand from outside the chest. New locks or a decorative plate with no lock will be provided. Information at (888) 856-8758 or www.newlock.net. Over the past 25 years, 12 children's deaths have resulted from unsupervised play in cedar chests that locked when lids were closed.

Show time

Observatory clocks back: Four antique clocks will be returned, spit and polished, next Saturday to the Cincinnati Observatory Center in Mount Lookout after a year at the Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute in Harrison. The clocks, manufactured between 1840 and 1908, were used by local astronomers to set the standard time for the region and measure the stars. The institute dismantled and restored the clocks for the Ohio bicentennial.

They will be displayed on frames showing their inner workings during Scopeout 2003, which includes art and astrophotography, kids' crafts, lectures on buying a telescope, telescope-making demos, tours of the observatory, Ask the Astronomer session, a dinner and presentation as well as viewing through the historic telescopes. Admission $7, $5 students 13-18; dinner and speaker, $15 extra. Information: 321-5186 or www.cincinnatiobservatory.org.

Contact Joy Kraft by phone: 768-8467; fax: 768-8330; e-mail: jkraft@enquirer.com.