Some stuff wot I have made

I've made a few crafty things in the past several months that I photographed and intended to post, but then my laptop died and I kind of forgot about them for a while.  Now, since I'm lazy, I'm combining them all into one post.

Here's a bracelet I made as a birthday gift for one of my sisters-in-law:

This is a wooden tissue box cover I decoupaged using some wrapping paper from a Lush boxed gift:

This is a tote bag I painted as a prize for a dance competition:

Here are several silk scarves and handkerchiefs I dyed:

Here's an earring made from one of Newton's moulted feathers:

And here's a necklace of freshwater pearls on knotted silk cord:

Now that I've cleared up the backlog, I'll try to write some more detailed posts for any new stuff I make.   I have a few ideas for upcoming projects floating around in my mind.  I've been saving the nicer feathers that Newton's moulted over the past year and have built up quite a collection; now I'm trying to figure out what to do with them.  The central tail feathers are especially gorgeous, but they're so long that I'm at a loss for ideas.

I also have a few pieces of silk clothing I would like to try over-dyeing.  Some are thrift store finds that are faded and need a bit of perking up; others are new items in colours I'm not really fond of, but that I found at ridiculously low clearance prices and figured I could over-dye to a nicer colour.  Since none of these items were particularly expensive, my reasoning is that it won't be a big loss if the over-dyeing doesn't turn out well - I'll just wear them at home as comfy painting/cleaning/lounging clothes.

The thing I need to work on most right now is a wildcrafting project for my Ethnobotany class.  I collected some fallen twigs and am considering the possibility of weaving a basket.  Still undecided on that one.  It would require me to learn how to weave a basket.

Invisible Zombies and Evil Beach Centaurs

I had a very fitful sleep the other night, but with it came a couple crazy awesome dreams that kind of made the resulting exhaustion worthwhile.

The first was an elaboration of a recurring dream about a zombie apocalypse.  Most of it was pretty ho-hum - zombies biting people, creating more zombies, world in chaos, survival horror, blah blah blah - but towards the end it got a little interesting.  Somehow, in the several times I woke up and fell asleep again, the dream logic evolved to the point where the zombies were invisible, and people were only vulnerable to zombie attack when in the light - especially sunlight.

I went to visit my mother, who was living in a cave in the middle of a forest (like you do), and who was apparently unaware of the invisible zombie menace.  She was knitting, which was odd not only because she was living in a cave after a zombie apocalypse, but also because in real life she has chronic tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome and hasn't knitted in years (I can't actually remember ever seeing her knitting, only crocheting, and that was quite a few years ago. She has recently taken up loom knitting after I told her about it, because she finds it doesn't aggravate her various hand/wrist/elbow issues, but that's beside the point...whatever my point was.).  Anyway, I guess she was having a hard time seeing her knitting work in her dark cave, because she carried it to the cave mouth and held it up in the sunlight to get a better look at it, inadvertently putting herself at risk of invisible zombie attack.  I warned her of the danger, and as evidence I pointed out that some of her stitches were being undone as she stood there, which was clearly the work of invisible zombies.  The horror!

After waking up again, I fell back asleep and dreamt I was on a beach where people were being chased down and trampled to death by giant, angry centaurs.  It was eventually revealed that the centaurs were somewhat reasonable (by dream logic standards) and only attacked people who had upset them in some way, but I never did learn what it was that merited death by centaur.

Involved, action-packed dreams like those are almost more tiring than staying awake.