Tonight, our group run attendees were sew happy with the task, that they all stayed for an extra 30 minutes to tie up some loose ends and finish off their draw string bags. In total 15 bags were created which task owner Mary will donate to Ealing Soup Kitchen to give to their clients 🛍️

While everyone was excited about the task, there were some experienced needleworkers, some lapsed and others who'd never sewn a stitch in their lives. Mary and Yvonne came prepared with t-shirts which would otherwise have gone for textile recycling and were ready to be given a new life. They explained - more than once - how to slice and dice a t-shirt into 4 bags, using the features of the original garment to easily transform it.

Clare meanwhile inherited the job of hand-sewing the GoodGym flag, making good progress with the letters and also cursing the slippery material of the GGs. Who chose that spangly material is lost in the mists of time. On our next visit, completing the GoodGym flag and the GG challenge will pass on to someone else.

By the end of the task, almost everyone had created at least one bag end to end and learned the skill of threading cord through a hem or waistband. Emmanuella also became a magician, turning a t-shirt into yarn which was a bit like reversing the manufacturing process. Reusing and recycling in act(i)on 💪

See Emmanuella's trick here https://www.instagram.com/p/C-6EiobhtQl/

We had a lighting and thunderstorms in our forecast for this evening. That was welcomed as the last few days were not so great with the hot sun.

Lamise the Task owner from Young Ealing Foundation whatsapped me where the tools were hours prior to the task. 3 Goodgymers signed up. But we had only 2 tools to use. A brush and a Patio weed remover. Both of them were brand new. We also had a can of Weedkiller.

Sevan took the brush and tried his best to collect the weeds as the head didn't fit the stick properly. We had to use the brush in a certain direction.

I was scraping the cracks of the patio and took the weeds out. The drizzle became heavier and we had to take a short break.

Clare then joined us and she had to resort to using her hands to pull the weeds out.

After scraping, brushing and binning for an hour we see the sun started showing its face and the rain had stopped signalling that we need to end the task.