WORDS:                         PHOTOS:
Aryn Sanderson            Maggie Kaiserman

It started out at my house in my parents’ room, and I was jumping on the bed. As I was jumping, I felt a presence under the bed and realized there was a person underneath it. I whispered to my mom that we needed to get out of the house, but, as I stepped off the bed, I felt someone grab my ankle. We started running and then, when I was out on the street, I got separated from my parents. The guy was walking me across a street, but at the street corner, I picked out a mother who was walking with her young daughter. I knew she would be the one to help me. As we walked across the street, I whispered in her ear, “This guy is going to take me away. I need you to call the police immediately.” She looked me in the eyes, and I could feel her presence. I could really see her eyes in-depth, and she could see into mine, and she recognized the fear.

Then Riley Cook took a deep breath, turned over and woke herself up … “the image of the woman and her eyes burned into (her) mind.”

This sort of dark, eerie vision is out of the norm for Cook, a self-described effervescent free spirit. Cook has three to five vivid dreams a night, although she typically dreams of lighter fare — such as skipping in fields of grass with friends or endless cereal bars.

But the dreams of a dreamweaver can be a very strange place, she said.

“Sometimes my dreams are so real and seem so normal, it’s hard to distinguish them from reality,” Cook, a nutrition junior, said. “Then I ask someone if they remember ‘what happened when …’ and they say it never happened.”

Cook has been a dreamweaver — someone who makes dream catchers — for almost a year now.

Cook handcrafts dream catchers, jewelry and festival outfits and sells her crafts online through Etsy (her store name is Hippie Gypsy Jewelry) and downtown at H&G Clothing on Higuera Street.

“I love making things people love,” she said. “I use a lot of found or unconventional materials. A lot of people wouldn’t see what I see as art or think to use it, like I’ll be on a hike, and I’ll stop every five feet because I’ll see a pretty rock or a feather. I like things that are kind of weird and kind of random — I guess that’s who I am.”

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As far as unusual items, Cook has incorporated feathers from a dove killed outside her house into a dream catcher and has used a chemistry vial to encase a butterfly in a necklace.

“I’m a scavenger,” Cook said, “not like a vulture, but like I find a purpose in everything. I’ll be walking and see a stick, and I’ll think, ‘Oh, I can make a magic wand out of that.’”

And the No. 1 rule of dream catcher creation? Never make a dream catcher when you’re angry, she said.

“I believe that there are bad vibes, and there is such a thing as sending people bad juju, which I don’t want to do,” Cook said. “So when I make dream catchers, I always try to listen to calming music and have a good mindset because I don’t want to weave something with negative thoughts in my head.”

Cook is secretive about the rest of her process, though.

“I’m not the first person to make dream catchers, and I’m not the last,” the nymph-like blonde said, “so I don’t like to tell my tricks of the trade as to how I make them. Anyone can make something like this, but they can’t make them how I make them.”

That’s because no one thinks quite how Cook thinks.

While working as a summer camp counselor, Cook estimates that she goes through at least 100 vials of glitter a day, sprinkling it on her campers’ heads or blowing it into the air.  At least one person in each of her classes this quarter refers to her by her summer camp moniker: Glitter.

They call her Glitter, and Cook’s kaleidoscope eyelids light up at the sound of the name. She spends approximately 20 minutes each morning applying eye makeup, carefully dipping her brush into loose glitter and painstakingly transforming her eyes into artwork.

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Really, Cook is a beautiful eccentric: a confident, lithe blonde who hosts fairy tea parties and makes her own hula hoops.

She rides to the market on a Segway.

She practices hooping and acro-yoga in her backyard.

She makes her own almond milk.

She constantly rearranges her crystal collection according to her mood.

She prices her crafts based on how hard it is for her to part with them.

And she always wears boots — just in case an adventure pops up.

Upon first meeting Cook, her free spirit seems ephemeral, fleeting, like a child who doesn’t know about the world’s harshness just yet. But she speaks with experience and maturity. She’s level-headed, responsible — overwhelmingly, shockingly reasonable. The girl they call Glitter doesn’t really drink, doesn’t really smoke and goes to sleep early. The rest of the day? She studies, and she crafts.

Despite financial success with her crafts, Cook isn’t planning to pursue dream weaving or jewelry making full-time.

She wants to go to medical school and afterwards hopes to focus on traditional, Eastern medicine.

“I consider myself a hippie, but I’m not just a hippie in la-la land, talking about the energy of the universe,” she said, “I’m doing nutrition, I’m pre-med and I want to go down that route. Crafting is just a fun energy release for me, even though I love it.”

Pick up a product of Cook’s love from Nov. 4-6 at Cal Poly’s Bi-Annual Craft Sale in the University Union. Cook’s crafts will also be available for purchase on Nov. 9 at The Maker Menagerie, a modern craft fair in Grover Beach. Her dream catchers, jewelry and clothing are available for purchase online at Etsy. She often posts her most recent creations on Instagram and offers her followers first dibs. Cook takes — and prefers — custom orders.