Sommar- och höstfixa!

Det är fixardags igen, så plocka fram alla prylar ni har haft sönder i sommar och kom på en Mending Maniacs träff redan i veckan!

Första chansen är nu på Torsdag 5/8 kl 18:00. OBS! Vi kommer att hålla till på ny adress vid Mariatorget, ring för vägbeskrivning.

Nästa två träffar blir 20/9 och 19/10, kl 18:00 båda gångerna.

Ring Anders på 073-9975368 om du är intresserad av att göra oss sällskap och behöver vägbeskrivning. Väl mött!

Nu fixar vi igen!

OBS! ÄNDRAT DATUM FÖR NÄSTA MENDINGSESSION!

På lördag den 19 juni kl. 13 gömmer vi oss för bröllopet och lagar istället våra prylar... Plocka fram era trasiga grejer och bege er till Metargatan på Södermalm!

Ring Anders på 073-9975368 om du är intresserad av att göra oss sällskap och behöver vägbeskrivning. Bienvenue!

Dags att plocka fram fixargrejerna igen

Den 19 april, kl 18:00 är det dags för vår tredje sammankomst. Plocka fram era trasiga prylar och bege er till Metargatan på Södermalm.

Ring Anders på 073-9975368 om du är intresserad av att göra oss sällskap och behöver vägbeskrivning.

Bi-lingual

This blog has so far been written entirely in English. We will continue to post all information that could be of interest to a wider public in English (like results of mending sessions, interesting links, etc..).

But since all of our mending members are Swedish, practical information, like when the next mending sessions are going to be organized, will here after be written in Swedish.

Translations will be provided upon request (leave a comment).

Durable Fashion

The new exhibition at Nordiska museet: "Modemakt - 300 år av kläder" [Fashion power - 300 years of clothing]  presents some interesting comments about past and present attitudes towards our clothes.

Before the industrialization, mending clothes that wore out was an economical necessity. Buying a new dress could cost as much as one years salary; no wonder the wearer wanted to use it for as long as possible.

Once the machines started turning and the industrialization gained momentum at the end of the 19:th century, prices dropped rapidly.

The trend towards cheaper commodities continues to this day, as does the trend to buy more stuff than the previous generation. We are now however slowly becoming aware of that there is another price to pay for consumption. We are using up the available resources in an ever increasing rate, putting people, animals and entire eco-systems in great jeopardy.

I do recommend a visit to the exhibition; it's an excellent historical looking glass for a close inspection of our own time.

Anticipating the Afterlife

Today, Make magazine published a blog post directing my attention to a really interesting article covering the concept Design for Disassembly (DfD).

The article: Afterlife: An Essential Guide to to Design for Disassembly, written by industrial designer Alex Diener, talks about the many advantages of taking the "repairabillity" in to consideration when designing new products. I quote:

Design for easy repair + provide access to parts: If it can be worn out, it will need to be replaced, and the design should support that. Batteries, moving components, contact areas are all examples of parts that will need replacement at some point. The challenge is two-fold: make it easy to replace, and make the parts accessible for purchased through a website or reseller. If these two factors aren't considered, the life of the product is severely limited.

Not only is it, as Diener points out, important for material recycling needs that product are easily disassembled. I would argue that repairing things is the best way to recycle. For instance, if you do a life cycle analysis of carbon dioxide emissions for a product you will find that a large portion of the environmental "cost" is due to transports. The more advanced and processed a product is, the more energy has gone in to the assembly and manufacture of it. Any repair you make close to your home and with a minimum amount of new material to, say, double the life span of a product will cut all those environmental costs in half! The savings could be huge.

The second mending success

Our second mending workshop, two days ago, was a successful event indeed. Miss S had made semlor to the delight and joy of all participants. The image doesn't even begin to do justice to how good they tasted.

Just like the first time, we got a lot of things fixed.There was a new set of broken headphones, and some old ones that got a shrink tube fixup. The electric screw driver that eluded us on our last workshop finally got fixed. Miss S saved a pair of broken candle sconce from the waste bin.

Every where you turned there was making and mending in progress. These stockings for instance, got a bunch of holes mended.

On the other side of the table, a pair of worn shoes had a touch up with some leather paint; have a look at the before and after images below.

In short, it was a marvelous mending evening and I had a great time!