Sustainable Skerries recently held their second Repair Café, and it was an even bigger success than the first.

The venue was changed for this event; being held this time in the Little Theatre.  This gave everyone plenty of space to work and move around in and good light in order to see what they were doing, particularly for the fiddly intricate stuff.

The main focus was once again on clothing and fabric repairs but, given the time of year, it was only natural that Christmas decorations featured heavily as well.

Local artist Niamh Sharkey had a table making Christmas cards, very popular with the adults as well as the youngsters; Connie Lai demonstrated Danish decorations; fabric repairs were facilitated by Ernestine Woelger, Mary Marsden, Nara Fritch and others.

The Men’s Shed had a table, where they demonstrated, amongst other things, restoration projects they had completed for Skerries Mills.

Local artisan silversmith Ed Cooke brought along a toolbox full of mysterious implements and demonstrated jewellery repairs and how to clean antique silver.

Back on the festive front, Marion and Charlie Heasman were showing how to make Christmas table centrepieces from logs decorated with berries and greenery plucked from the hedgerow.

Most importantly, Karen McCaffrey and Niamh Quigley kept everyone supplied with tea, coffee and cake.

Apologies to those I’ve omitted to mention and thanks to everyone who pitched in

The beauty of this sort of event is that we all not only learn how to reduce our environmental footprint but we save money into the bargain.  What’s more, it’s fun; the kids in the photos certainly seemed to think so.