As part of my current decluttering adventures I decided to use this long Easter weekend to take a small action on each of the tiny projects that have been bouncing about in my head for ages.

There’s often a lot going on in my brain – it’s really quite exhausting. Hopefully this will allow some space.

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Small things:

+ Taking in the sleeves of an old t-shirt of Don’s that I’ve been wearing around the house – tacked them to size – looked ridiculous – abandoned – will keep wearing with floppy sleeves

+ Reconstructing Joe/Frank’s year 10 rugby-style jersey into a cropped jumper for me – looked ridiculous – abandoned – turned to rags

+ Putting small clear feet on those small glass plates I made in my first glass class which were very wobbly and pretty much unusable – completed – excellent! – makes a wonderful saucer for my teapot

+ Turning some pins and buttons into magnets – completed – satisfying!

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I bought supplies for Kintsugi after my class in July 2019 – and they’ve been sitting various cupboards for almost 2 years.

Quite why I purchased another diamond file and chisels and work gloves when I already had each of these left from the class is something I cannot explain. I’d hazard a guess that it is because I very much enjoy buying things?

I did decide against smashing those wee plates I’d bought and they are now usefully employed as saucers under various gardening experiments.

But I did have two ceramic coasters which had smashed a while back and I’d thought to kintsugi them back together, but they’d been sitting there and sitting there and sitting there, guilting me and taking up space in my brain.

In my ruthless Easter reckoning I was all set to chuck them and buy replacements – but when I picked them up I thought why not just give it a little try?

So I sat on the upper balcony late on Friday afternoon and filed and glued and had a lot of fun.

Rather than racing to finish in a single evening, I decided to space it out over two days. This could have been dangerous, because day two could easily spin out to six months hence – but I was fairly motivated.

I also had an old broken yet adorable wee piggy bank of Bessie’s which I’d dropped when I was helping her pack to move in with Hansel around 18 months ago. Having this sitting about meant more occupied brain space.

I hadn’t touched piggy on day one – and when it came time to start filing, I reconsidered my approach, thinking he might look better simply glued back together, with a gold spot covering the chip. Spoiler – I should have gone with my original instinct. The glue line was not at all as invisible as I’d imagined – but it still looks pretty cute with the scar. And hey – a learning experience is never a bad thing.

I’m very pleased with the outcome of the coasters though!

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I’ve been eating greek yoghurt and berries for breakfast for several months now and go through a litre tub of yoghurt each week. This creates quite a lot of plastic waste that guilts me every time I rinse a container out for the recycling, so I thought – why not make my own?

I planned to use this very simple recipe which uses a litre of milk and 1/4 cup of yoghurt and duly purchased the ingredients. Which then sat in the fridge for over a week while I stuck myself in a dithering pattern.

Of course when I eventually grabbed the milk and yoghurt from the fridge to make the yoghurt it occurred to me that this approach was creating just as much plastic waste (face-palm-emoji), nevertheless she persisted.

After some time in a very, very low, barely warm (40oC) oven and overnight in the fridge …

Not quite as tart as I’d like, but definitely yoghurt!

Will I repeat? Possibly not!

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And to kick it all off, on Thursday I took a fading tourist map of Tokyo from it’s cheap ikea frame on our bedroom wall and had it scanned. I’d been planning to do this for months – yet another thing taking brain space.

Once I had it off the wall and in my hand the way to the scanning shop, I wondered why I was treating this ephemeral object as something amazingly precious that needed preservation forever.

I had it scanned it anyway (it cost $0.40 and I was at the office supplies store for other things), but will put something else ephemeral up on the wall and rotate with other ephemeral things.

So very strange how the brain works.

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Also planning to take the next step on

+ pillow cases for Joe/Frank – I’m slightly daunted by the envelope closure – but I have cut out the bits.

+ cushion for the top of the small cabinet behind Don’s desk where NewKitty occasionally likes to hang out in the afternoons – no idea what the blocker is with this one – maybe finding something for stuffing?

Onward!