The great IKEA label hunt

Someone got Hilary a label-maker for her birthday. You know those ones that emboss block letters in white on little pieces of coloured plastic tape? So she's been labelling everything: her glasses, random body parts of friends, etc.

Today, Jamie and Alison and I had an evening trip to IKEA planned. Shelving! Cheap picture frames! Swedish meatballs! Hilary was going to come along to return a defective shelf, but wound up getting a ride from another friend & going earlier in the day.

Shortly before we left, an e-mail appeared from Hilary. I opened it, and nearly fell off my chair laughing when I read the first line:

"Okay, so I've distributed labels throughout ikea."

The hunt was on! She provided clues. The first one was fairly easy: "up the stairs there is a bin. in the bin there are bins you can carry with you and put other bins in. what nationality is this bin?"

What could it be but:



We collected that label, and combed the store further. We were initially baffled by a reference to "a sweet dessert, usually found at canadian fairgrounds. There is a bin of them outside the cafeteria." There were no food bins outside the cafeteria, but there were bins of stuffed animal toys: rats, hippos, beavers. We stopped thinking literally: Beaver tails! The label read, FOR YOU.

We didn't fare so well with the Ektorp Jennylund: we were able to locate Hilary's favourite armchair where, as promised, it "sits on the top shelf and thinks about neuroscience experiments," but couldn't find the label. Same with a cryptic reference to duvet covers. We found the office chairs, and Jamie sat, as instructed, in a nice blue one, from which angle he was able to see this:



We reported back to Hilary, who told us where the labels we missed were. So, if you happen to be in IKEA North York sometime soon, have a look just to the left of the pensive pink Ektorp Jennylund, and behind the catalogue stand in the duvet section. There might still be a label there... FOR YOU!