What do draught and sausages have in common? It is not the draught beer and wurst at Oktoberfest, oh no! It's a bit too early for that and a bit too far West. Tonight a GoodGym trio, Sevan, Kash and Klaudia, who came to her first session 🥳, set off on a journey to East from Ealing Broadway. Despite totalling a decent distance (8 km on the way there and back), they haven't made it to Germany but stopped in Acton to meet Mary, Yvonne and Lone from Ealing Repair Cafe, a trio who fights waste by teaching people to repair and upcycle clothes by using patching or darning techniques. What a bunch of legends!

Yet another trio, Claire, Emmanuella and Kate (AKA the Punctual Ones), were already at the task location, The Doughnut Factory, accompanying the Ealing Repair Cafe team in creating useful stuff from old stuff using stuffing techniques. They were cutting and sewing old jeans legs, then filling them with scraps and damaged blankets to make draught excluders for the clients of Ealing Soup Kitchen. Those oversized sausage-shaped objects of varying sizes and densities could be placed at the bottom of draughty doors or windows to keep the cold away in the upcoming winter months. The idea was to use upcycling to provide a low-cost option for vulnerable people to make their homes cosy without spending too much on heating! 🧣

Partway through the task, one more trio arrived, who had to use a series of secret knocks to get inside the headquarters of The Secret Sausagety (Sevan gave me a look when I wanted to use The Secret Sausagety as the report title, which I resisted doing, but I couldn't resist using that pun!). Chris, Lena and Marta joined the fun, learning how to use a sewing machine, practising their hand-sewing techniques, and playing tug-of-war in an attempt to stuff three rolled blankets into a single jeans leg. It was intense!

As a result of an exceptionally long (time flies when you are having fun!) over 90-minute Tuesday evening session, ten draught excluders have been created, and - oh boy, is it finally complete? - the upcycled GoodGym flag has been finished! A shoutout to Claire, who has hand-sewn the last two pieces - the GoodGym logo elements - to the flag fabric. Claire became the GoodGym Ealing legend forever in the crafts department! 🏆

Well done to the entire team for their thirst to learn new skills and use them for good while reducing the waste of damaged clothes, and special kudos to Klaudia for sticking out till the end at her first session, then running back to EB with the group 🙌

A massive thank you to all three members of Ealing Repair Cafe for their fantastic workshop idea and for teaching GoodGymers sewing. 🙏 Fingers crossed that the clients of Ealing Soup Kitchen will like the draught excluders and keep warm during the winter.

If you loved the Ealing Repair Cafe workshop, you may be interested in the following:

• Help Mary promote the reduce-reuse-recycle mindset by joining next week's GoodGym task in Acton - sign up here!
• Check out what other events Ealing Repair Cafe has planned
• Check out the brand new Ealing Library of Things, where you can borrow useful equipment without buying it - what about a sewing machine for your new project?

Despite the short notice change in task, six GoodGymers made their way to Walpole park, to help Ealing Park Rangers fighting back against the vicious bramble growths around the park!

Sevan, Paul, Madhan and Christos met at The Rickyard, with Kash getting an early start on acquiring the necessary tools, supplies and trolley to demolish this latest area of brambles. The team then made their way towards the South entrance of the park, meeting up with Kate at the newest site for clearing up, to help with the safety around the park.

But first, Madhan celebrated an incredible achievement of 300 good deeds, and today’s was a fitting task for someone with such a level of GoodGym experience, in preparing to battle this beast of brambles!

Picking up our shears and loppers, the team set to work on the brambles, leaving nothing in our wake. Brambles were chopped and tackled from the bottom, dragged out and piled onto the trolley for carting off to the waste pile.

With the blackberries starting to ripen amongst the brambles, a few GoodGymers were courageous enough to try these out - apparently these are still a little on the sour side from the taste tests!

Another large bramble patch was destroyed, opening up the surrounding paths and creating a safer area for pedestrians.