Natural Clay

I've collected some natural clay from a river bank - I'm going to attempt to make a pot and fire it in a wood or charcoal fire.

Other Projects I Have In Mind To Tackle:

I want to make a machine that paints pictures - either a big paint plotter, or something that works as (some kind of) robotic analogue of the human arm.

Wind turbine - I want to see if it can be done on next to no budget.

Parabolic mirror array (or some kind of mirror suitable for solar experiments, including cooking)

Rudder autopilot for the boat - I think I actually have all the parts for this; I've got microcontrollers, servo motors, an electronic compass module...

Something that makes use of the glue lamination techniques I learned when I made the boat - maybe a rocking chair, maybe a sledge... I don't know, but something curvy.

A MAME arcade cabinet

Something that makes use of wooden gears

Some kind of musical automaton

A Backpack Tubulum - that is, a musical instrument as used by the Blue Man Group - one of these:

An underwater webcam, or maybe a remote-controlled underwater vehicle, with a camera built in.

A lobster/crab pot - how hard can it be? (Getting it out into the water might be more of a challenge though).

Lost Wax Casting - this is where you make a model from wax, embed it in clay, fire it (during which process the wax melts out), then pour molten metal into the void left by the escaped wax.

Also, pewter casting - I'm told that it's easy to make the moulds out of cuttlebones.

Paper making - using a variety of different fibre sources.

Something steam-powered. I don't have any heavy engineering tools - it is possible to make a steam engine without them?

Experiments with natural dyestuffs

A digital microscope. I have one already, but it;s little more than a toy and is let down by insufficient illumination and a poor quality image sensor - it must be possible to make a slightly better one.