Since the pandemic started, the news media note that pasta has been flying off grocery store shelves almost as fast as hand sanitizer and toilet paper. Certainly pasta is cheap, easy to cook, and filling; and throwing hot pasta against the wall to test its doneness has to be stress relieving.

But there may be another reason for pasta’s scarcity, which an AboutBone blog reader tipped me off about—craft projects. She sent me an image of a pasta skeleton, which had been forwarded to her. She did not know its provenance, so I was hesitant to post it without being able to attribute the artist, because even pasta artists have intellectual property rights.

I stewed over the issue for several days, and then during my next early-morning, biweekly foray to the grocery store, I scored eight boxes of pasta from the sparsely stocked shelves. Each box contained a different shape of hard, whitish construction material, faintly reminiscent of tiny bones. So here are examples to inspire you should you and your kin tire of baking bread and assembling jigsaw puzzles.

Send me a picture of your masterpiece, either gluten-laden or gluten-free, and I will include it in a future post.