Recipe archive
Started 18 October 2023 · cooking
Pages here change slowly, usually on quiet Monday afternoons, and that suits birdwatching just fine.
A second attempt, early in 2026, went better, though not by much. The hardest part was sanding the edges, which took several evenings on its own.
I took photographs at every stage out by the river, which turned out useful for the next attempt. An uncle with a very full shed helped with the wiring, and the result is better for it.
How it went
- Show it to someone honest
- Fix whatever broke
- Tidy up and write notes
- Live with it for a few weeks
Notes
The design of this page is plain on purpose so that it will still work on whatever comes next, much like a box of spare parts. If you want to try something similar, take a photograph before taking anything apart and finish one thing before starting the next.
The first version, made in April 2026, was embarrassingly crooked, and most of the work since has been quiet improvement. As it turned out, this started as a way to use up offcuts one wet weekend in February and grew from there.
The plan changed twice, mostly because of the size and partly because of the last coat of paint. Some of the older notes about birdwatching are out of date, but I keep them as a record of the mistakes.
Feel free to borrow any idea about birdwatching from this site, though a postcard is always nice. Thanks for stopping by; everything here was made stubbornly, mostly at the library in Basel.
Most of the measuring happened at the kitchen table, with a wobbly wooden chair holding the paper flat and someone at the library offering advice. Halfway through I changed my mind about the handles, and it saved the whole thing.
I return to it whenever the weather allows, fix the worst of the scratches, and leave the rest for later. Most evenings on it ended by the window with a folding table and a page of notes. The cost was mostly time; the materials came to less than a new book, thanks to a second-hand shop near the river.
Back in 2026, I finally got it to the point where it looked better than I feared. To be fair, it still has a slight wobble, but I have decided nobody else notices.