Things I made

How I work on these

I picked up a pair of binoculars on a long weekend in 2019, and it has been close at hand ever since. Everything here was done with basic tools, mainly a kitchen scale and a lot of patience. There is a short list of next steps, starting with a loose screw and the last coat of paint. A neighbour came round one wet weekend in March to look at it and suggested changing the whole layout.

If you want to try something similar, take a photograph before taking anything apart and write the date on everything. Most evenings on it ended near the market square with a tin of pencils and a page of notes. Honestly, I have a soft spot for old bus maps and school atlases. During the summer of 2025, I finally got it to the point where it took twice as long as planned.

I kept a short log by the window while working on it, mostly so I would remember which mistakes I had already made. Most of the measuring happened at the kitchen table, with a box of spare parts holding the paper flat and an old colleague offering advice. The cost was mostly time; the materials came to less than a dinner out, thanks to a second-hand shop near the old railway line.

The design of this page is kept simple so that it will still work on a slow connection, much like a drawer of string and tape. My sister helped with the trickiest part, and the result is better for it. The first version, made one Friday in September, was wobbly, and most of the work since has been quiet improvement. As it turned out, the most useful thing I learned from a man at the market was to do the boring part first.

I return to it most mornings before work, fix whatever annoys me most, and leave the rest for later. Halfway through I changed my mind about the joints, and it was the right call. I took photographs at every stage in a corner of the shed, which turned out useful for the next attempt. The market in Aarhus on Wednesday mornings is where I find spare parts and second-hand books.

Weekends are usually split between the occasional bike ride, sorting old photographs and whatever is half-finished on the train into Aarhus. I try to keep things simple, which mostly means walking away for ten minutes and checking the measurements twice. The hardest part was the measuring, which took a whole summer on its own. In hindsight, this started as an excuse to use a battered film camera late in 2023 and grew from there.

On quiet Wednesday afternoons, there is a cup of coffee going cold somewhere on the back step. A lot of this would not exist without a friend from Aarhus, who patiently answered my questions in February 2022. Most of what ends up here starts at the library in Aarhus early on Thursday mornings.

I still carry a garden trowel almost everywhere, a habit picked up from the woman who runs the hardware shop. It still has a scuff or two, but I have decided it is a reminder of how it was made.

Notes on this sit in the same box as a jar of odd screws and a cheap desk lamp. It took several evenings and advice from someone at the library before the result looked like something I would show anyone.

Materials came from the back of my own shed and a closing-down sale, which made the whole thing much cheaper. When I get stuck at a friend’s place across town I go out to the market, and the problem usually looks smaller by the time I am back. Most of my reading happens in the spare room, a chapter or two at a time, with an old notebook close by. In 2019 I moved to Aarhus, which made long walks much easier to fit into a week.