Felt buttons (crafty)!

Or beads for stringing, or items for applique/decoration...take some felted wool from an old sweater (or you could try it with unfelted). Cut sets of three circles (or you could cut flower shapes). Draw yarn with a knot on one end through a stack of two only (important!), then put the third one on top, hiding the knot. draw the yarn through the center, back up, and bisect the stack, divide that in half again, and then in half again to make this eight-segmented vaguely Buddhist sort of button. be sure to keep the yarn tight to bunch it all together. I used felted sweater wool, but I think I will put these through the wash to mash the materials together further. This is a fun little craft  project which takes little room and time. The wool came from the bottom of a long sweater which had developed holes in it- I may replace the original buttons with these, or I may make a necklace.

DIY anemone costume/lamp enhancer

This is a costume, believe it or not. Poet Laynie Browne wrote a play about the reproduction of sea anemones a few years back (her husband is a marine biologist) for which I did the costumes. Sea anemones can reproduce both sexually and asexually, and this particular kind changed gender in the course of its maturity (I'm going to ask Laynie to review this, because I'm sure I'm not remembering this quite correctly).I asked everybody to wear dark clothes, and for the anemone princesses I made these neckpieces from a wire bent into a circle, with curled pieces on the end for a clasp. I wrapped the wire in yarn, and then attached strips of torn light cloth (I used an old silk shirt from the Goodwill) and yarn. At present this sits around a very boring Ikea floor lamp and makes a nice peach-colored light in the evenings. I'm sure there are probably a hundred household uses for this...what do you think?

Here's what Laynie said:The species in my play, Zoanthina and Zoanthella, were hermaphrodites- and did a big group spawning (or as in the play, orgy). We interpreted the orgy by throwing confetti around as a representation of gametes, if anyone is thinking this is one of THOSE plays.