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?

Steph Ducat and Emmanuella went on a sunny afternoon to the Monday Ealing Soup Kitchen and release the first Good gym volunteers Naomi and Alaa who were on the 4 to 6pm shift. Alaa got stuck in the kitchen and stayed longer to help with the cooking as it was super busy. Steph and Emmanuella started with labelling clothes. Then Emmanuella was on clothing section and Steph was assigned to security at the food take away queue which was a bit heated today...was that due to the sun, hungry clients or something else? Sunny so sun glasses were to hand and they were red!!Feeding hungry people all before midnight and giving them bottles of water....oups 3 rules to remember that Mr Wing mentioned for those who know about the Gremlins :-) . Avoid sunlight, do not let them in contact with water and no feeding after midnight. Of course it was not the case as none are furry and got their food at 6pm!! Once the rush hour was done, we carried on with labels...good thing we dont hate labels as we would have call ourselves the antilabelists. Tonight we were lucky to see the small bags we did from old t-shirts with the Ealing Repair Shop over 2 weeks ago.

GoodGymers from Ealing and Hounslow combined their engineering greatness this morning to create a huge train track for autistic and SEND children to play with and interact with each other. Not only were they "doing engineering", they were also surrounded by engineering marvels as All Aboard Club are trialling the Transport Museum Depot in Acton as a new location. That's pretty awesome 🚇

The group helped unload the last boxes from task owner Richard's car and entered the building to see where they'd be ~~playing~~ working. As they climbed the stairs, they found themselves on a mezzanine level, looking over the historic tube trains in the depot. Exciting for both the volunteers and attendees.

The mezzanine area was big, so it was good that there were 10 people to build the track. Like the children attending, they worked by themselves, then over time, they connected their islands of track to other islands and soon, the whole floor was covered.

As the loose ends were being tied up, the first children started arriving. Sevan joined Richard and the Depot staff in guiding the children and parents in through the gift shop, trying to keep them from being distracted, past the big trains, up the stairs and to the small trains for them to play with. Emmanuella, Gus, Alan and Steph stayed upstairs to help the children and parents, maybe having time to set a few tank engines puffing around the track themselves.

The bell has sounded at the Hanwell School of Boxing Charity. The referee being Linda and in the ring we had Good gymers against the vilains(bindweed brambles and branches). The vilains had decided to corner and cover the ropes of the car park, but Linda and the 3 goodgymers would not be counted out and tackled the over growing opponents. After 90 minutes in the ring it was an ultimate decision : knock out given to Goodgym against brambles and Company. Goodgym did not take the dive. The car park alias the ring was looking much better and Linda can get the cars to park against the fence with no issues. Emmanuella was the lucky star as found £10 while fighting the weeds, which we all decided to drop in Linda boxing school charity box. Harvey ran to the mission and found smiley in the ring. Steph Ducat moved a retired frog boxer back to the woodlands as was clearly knocked out.

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/