Okay, so I made a flute out of an air-drying clay (darwi, should that be important), because all the other clay available to me was of such poor quality it literally dried in my hands. Also, the other clay needed firing, and I have no access to a kiln. The flute worked out fairly well, but needed a bit of sanding, which caused the dry clay to start 'chalking' up my hands each time I hold it. Since I'm probably going to actually use it to play, I was wondering if there was a way to add a finish layer that is mostly non-toxic.

Any thoughts?

Okay, so I have been banned from all things crafty for the following threee weeks or so, which means I suddenly get these weird, craft-related questions popping up.
Putting a whole series of LEDs (I blame it on my brother's LED-studded pc keyboard with glowy LED-powered scroller bit on top of the matching mouse) into an article of clothing (jeans, T-shirt, hoodie,...) would probably cause things like electrocution, burns, death and freakish explanations in ambulances. But then news spreads and you learn that a town uses glass fibre for its lit christmas decorations to save energy (and probably loads of money, too). You know, like with the portable UFO lights or some kinds of christmas tree lights, lighting one street-width of decoration with one bulb. Questions at the nearest EA-ICT semi-specialist tells me that

"Glass fibre won't get any hotter under a lamp than your glasses would."

So my question is: is it possible to put glass fibre in anything made out of cloth and then light it up with the use of a low-heat generating light source (like a blue LED similar to the type used for lit juggling balls) in a (hidden) pocket, linked to the glass fibre?

I've been doing this since after I used scraps of wrapping paper to protect the covers of my (hired) schoolbooks and (lo and behold) still had the same paper as at least three other people, sometimes for the same subject, sometimes for a different subject with the same size book, which caused problems with lending them out when someone else had forgotten theirs. Then I did this to my Latin-Human Language dictionary with whatever I had lying around, and it sort of stuck. So I thought I'd share.



I spent about one afternoon on pasting, folding, self-adhesive-foil-sticking, three hours on cutting and two weeks on the on and off collecting of all sort of fun stuff to put on them.

Comments? Ideas for improvement?

Okay, so I'm relatively new to cross stitch. Last year I started on my first big project and got a ring because I looked silly losing to a foot of lime-green fabric. I was about halfway when school came along and put my project on a 13 month hiatus. Two weeks back, my mom (who gives cross stitching as a class during lunch) came to me and asked if she could borrow my WIP to show to one of her pupils who wanted off the practice fabric and start on 'real' fabric. Thing keeps lying around in the kitchen, I get bored and start on it again. When I have to move the ring, I notice the little metal part's left a tiny rust stain on both my stitches and my fabric.

Big question: can I get the stain out without totally ruining the thread/fabric or do I leave it in and pretend it's supposed to look like that?