Jeffrey Garman made an ingenious set of window shades from old computer punch cards, a needle, and some thread. From his build notes on Flickr:
We have where I work boxes upon boxes of these prehistoric paper punch-cards. I'm always looking for novel ideas to put them to good use again. Besides being good for blocking out the sun they also make good book marks and table leg stabilizer's… I think the cards I used were 'saved' Fortran programs.
(via MAKE: Blog)