Swedish Easter Twigs

I am accustomed to living in relatively creative households, and my current apartment is no exception. We have a sewing room, a glue gun, tons of yarn and fabric, a couple of sewing machines, colored pencils, markers, pins, needles, I'm sure there's glitter somewhere... You get the drift. Most of the stuff belongs to Anita, but we're all prone to random bursts of crafting.

At any rate, I'm pretty used to coming home to find that the living room has been appropriated for quilting, or that we have new "art" decorating our walls. Last week, I climbed up the stairs to be confronted by one of the more unique creations that has ever graced our home:



The photo doesn't really do it justice. It's an arrangement of twigs with feathers stuck to the ends. The feathers are all dyed in bright colors, and the twigs have little decorative wooden eggs hanging on them.

I've since learned that these feather-sticks are called "påskris," and that they are a traditional Swedish Easter decoration. For real. Anita had to show me pictures in a book to convince me that they weren't just some kooky thing she made up.

Makes my mom's traditional Easter bunny cake (with coconut for the fur) seem really conventional.