Gifts, eggs and indecision

Gifts!

My lovely daughter gave me these minis for Christmas - she picked them off my Etsy wishlist, and I love them!
The two tiny bowls are from The Helmers - you can see their Etsy shop here. The bowls are made of mammoth ivory. Mammoth ivory is beautiful! It is from mammoth tusks dug out of the permafrost in Siberia and Alaska - since the creatures are extinct, it is an acceptable way of owning and enjoying ivory. The bowls are exquisitely turned.

The specimen jars, inkwell and tiny real bones are from Grace at Honey and Bee on Etsy. Grace's work is fabulous - she has a lovely elegant touch to her minis which I admire greatly :D

And a glorious surprise in the post!! Dear delightful Sans sent me a beautiful set of braids along with a lovely quilled card!! :) What a gorgeous inspiration these braids are!! If you know Sans' work you'll have seen what delightful and inspiring minis she creates from everyday items. Her tribal house is a masterpiece (mistress-piece?)
She describes me as 'elegant, neat and disciplined'. Hmmm, if only you could have heard the guffaw when I told Alan this. He almost choked on his coffee :D Only in my minis, Sans!

Thankyou soooo much, Sans! You are so generous :)

Eggs, Indecision and a Rant

I'm having trouble getting back into doing much - after the flood excitement, the Christmas overeating and the thoroughly enjoyable weeks with my family staying - inspiration is hiding from me.

The muse has left, she's gone away
And where she's hiding, none can say

So I'm searching for her in my stuff!
I've decided to do the Mother of all Spring Cleans :)))
You know, the sort of archeological rummaging where you find UFOs (UnFinished Objects), dead projects, things, pictures, and ideas written on bits of forgotten strangely-filed-away paper, some from decades ago when I could still knit (patterns from the 80s are truly scary!!), or still had a working relationship with my sewing machine (now it's more like delicate untrusting negotiation . . .). I decided at the same time to change around the guest bedroom and my workroom, seriously disturbing generations of dust bunnies!!
Now I'm on a strict rule of looking through every single item and piece of paper in my stash/mess/bookshelves/boxes, and deciding if it is, in the wise words of William Morris, 'known to be useful or believed to be beautiful'. If it's neither, out it goes. It may take weeks :D
This is proving scary and liberating at the same time. Also, moving house last time was exhausting - the more that goes to the rubbish dump now, the better.

It clears my mind, too.
My daughter returned to Brisbane during the terrible floods there last week. Thankfully her house was safe, but some of her friends lost everything. Their house was flooded up to above the ceiling with silty water which had sewage in it :(
It makes me think, what exactly is valuable to me? If I lost it all, what would I miss? This is helping me in my clearance. Attachment is alright, so long as it's for valid reasons.
Enough rant.

I'm fairly sure that I still want to make a mini dragon room next, but it needs stone walls (all that fire), and I like egg carton stones, but eating all those eggs is slow work, haha :) I've found a type of carton that is a perfect base colour and texture, and has a big flat lid with nothing printed on it - yay!!
Anyone know any recipes for really big omelettes??

P.S. - all of the above is subject to change, depending on how much coffee I drink :D

Glenda