Uses

Everyday tools

pair of binoculars

Thanks for stopping by; everything here was made slowly, mostly out by the river.

secondhand bicycle

Every May, in a café near the canal, I look back at the year so far and quietly drop whatever is not working.

kitchen scale

I try to answer every letter, whether it comes from Aarhus or further away, even if it takes a fortnight.

pocket knife

I took photographs at every stage on the back step, which turned out more useful than the notes.

pencil and a cheap notebook

Visiting a new town, I always look for the old station and a good bakery first, just as I did when I moved to Aarhus.

On the shelf

• The Hare with Amber Eyes
• Braiding Sweetgrass
• The Peregrine

Why so little

A second attempt, one Monday in May, went about as badly as the first. The cost was mostly time; the materials came to less than a new book, thanks to the market in Aarhus. My Tuesday evenings mostly belong to the local choir, unless the woman who runs the hardware shop needs a hand. A friend from the walking group came round late in 2019 to look at it and suggested changing the finish.

It still has one visible repair, but I have decided it is a reminder of how it was made. Most of the time, most of what ends up here starts at the library in Aarhus early on Wednesday mornings. On a good day near the river I make progress, and on a bad day I at least learn to start earlier.

The hardest part was the wiring, which took several evenings on its own. I kept a short log at the kitchen table while working on it, mostly so I would remember which mistakes I had already made.

Most evenings on it ended in a corner of the shed with a box of spare parts and a page of notes. An uncle with a very full shed helped with the last coat of paint, and the result is better for it.

Halfway through I changed my mind about the colour, which an old colleague had suggested from the start. Everything here was done with basic tools, mainly an old hand plane and one borrowed clamp. Feel free to borrow any of the notes about houseplants from this site, and tell me how it went.

There is no grand plan behind any of this, just putting tools back where they belong on rainy weekends. The best ideas tend to arrive by the window at least once a month, usually just after I have put the pencil down. The first version, made back in 2020, was rough, and most of the work since has been quiet improvement.

There is a short list of next steps, starting with one small thing and sanding the edges. Looking back, the plan changed twice, mostly because of the handles and partly because of the heavy lifting.

I return to it on quiet Monday afternoons, fix the worst of the scratches, and leave the rest for later. I still carry a pencil and a cheap notebook almost everywhere, a habit picked up from a reader from Aarhus. Honestly, it took a long weekend and a lot of patience before the result looked like something I would show anyone. Most of the measuring happened at the kitchen table, with a pile of offcuts holding the paper flat and someone at the library offering advice.

Notes on this sit in the same box as an old notebook and a wobbly wooden chair. The design of this page is plain on purpose so that it will still work on an old phone, much like a jar of odd screws. The most useful thing I learned from a retired teacher down the road was to take a photograph before taking anything apart. On most Monday evenings, I usually end up at a borrowed workbench with a folding table.

I would rather do one thing patiently than five things in a hurry, and years of small repairs taught me that. If you want to try something similar, start smaller than you think and finish one thing before starting the next.

This started as a weekend experiment in April 2024 and grew from there. Pages here change slowly, usually whenever I have a free hour, and that suits houseplants just fine.