Before I explain what I did for this, I think I should explain how my mind works, a little bit. I have always been a hyper-intuitive thinker. By that I mean that a hundred random thoughts drift through my head and go off on bunny trails constantly, sometimes culminating in association leaps. In simple terms, I think A - Z - Q - R, etc. If I stop and really think about it, I can sometimes plot out how I got to each point (A - B - C - D, etc.) I've never been much of a linear thinker unless I backtrack my thought process.

What this means in terms of this praxis is I signed up for the task and let it drift around in my mind for several days. Add to this that I spend a lot of time at work alone (sic) which gives me plenty of time to think.

I was doing a major cleaning project and just letting my thoughts drift as I cleaned. I was thinking about this task, the praxii for this task that I read, what I was going to do with my kitchen next (I'm currently decorating it in an Edward Gorey theme), how my kids were doing, and the trip to Orlando I'm leaving for tomorrow. I had been mulling over the idea of knitting a book about knitting, but wasn't sure that I wanted to since I have a half a dozen knitting projects that I need to complete and it would probably be years before I got around to it. I liked the fact that for all of the praxii that have been posted the material that the books were made out of generally informed the content of the book. I wanted to do something like that, but wasn't sure how.

I then began reciting The Gashlycrumb Tinies to myself, as I am going to paint all of the lines from the book on my kitchen walls. At the same time I was wondering what I was going to do with all the toe tags that I have. Then it clicked! I could make a book out of toe tags, using a defective body bag as the cover.



This satisfied my desire to have the content of the book connected to the materials, and for it to be something about reading or literature. Then I thought if I was making a book about learning the alphabet and learning to read, I should also make a book about dying, somehow connected to reading or literature. Then the thought occured to me, why not make one about the last words of famous authors? I had two different kinds of toe tags, so I could make two different kinds of books.

This decided, I set about gathering the materials.



When I went home I sat on the couch, watched TV, and wrote out both of the books.



There was a bit of concern when it came time to make the covers. I had thought that i would try to sew the body bags so you had to unzip them like standard size body bags in order to read the pages, but the plastic is very thin and the zippers didn't want to cooperate. I ended up taking each end and making the zipper the front cover. I bound the books using the strings that are used to attach the toe tags, making it so the books were entirely made out of the things that you would use to use these items for their true purpose.

If anyone wants I will edit this to include each entry from the Last Words book. I wrote out the name of the author, the person who was attending them when they died, what they said, and the time and date that they passed on.

Also, if anyone *wants* the books, let me know which one you want and I will select someone to receive each book by letting my ferret choose a name.

Ok, so it's not squirrels which is hella cool, but will it stand in for human skin and blood?