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This week in the build-up to Mother’s Day, we’ve been making suggestions how you could do something for your mother. We started on Monday with gardening:
Instead of cut flowers full of air-miles why not spruce up the garden for your mum? Borrow our tools to help!

Next we suggested you could brighten up the car or patio for her by borrowing our pressure washer!

Then we put it to our members to spend quality time baking together, or bake something for her that she’ll love. Even if you’re not an expert in cupcake decoration, you can make them look great on our lovely cupcake stand! (it’s also perfect for afternoon tea)

Then we asked whether your mum would love to have that pesky DIY task done at last. Give her a treat by getting a job done for her… we have a wide variety of hand and power tools you can borrow…

Finally,  to make the wonderful lady/ies who brought you up feel special by gathering together for some quality family time. We have lots of games and jigsaws to borrow to keep you entertained all afternoon…

And this weekend it now is Mother’s Day, so take up one of our ideas for her. Or see whether we can loan you something you need to do a job for her or give her a treat. Or it doesn’t need to be this weekend, you can do any of these things any day. Look online at our catalogue and see what we’ve got to assist you. SHARE Oxford catalogue

We’re really happy to now be sharing the Library of Things with the people of Oxford since our launch! You can find out more about how it works, and sign up, in our borrowing pages.

Photos and media

You can see more photos from the event, coverage on the BBC Oxford news, and watch our “story so far” video (which was played throughout our event).

We had a great event on Saturday (16th) launching the Library of Things in Oxford. Such a lot of enthusiastic people, and loads of compliments about how well it was all organised, donations of items, offers of volunteering, and general good feelings, from us as volunteers and from those who attended. Thanks to everyone – and more pix to follow!

The cutting of the ribbon:

The Oxford Mail did a nice little piece about last Sunday’s Repair Cafe!

Out of 40 items brought for repair, 30 were made good, a total of some 100 kgs not going into incineration. Some other things will be repaired now their owners know what’s wrong and how. Items ranged from a pair of jeans to bikes and electrical and electronic equipment, tools and knives sharpened, no challenge unaddressed.

But most of all it was another fun day with lots of stuff revived, with lovely people, hopefully with some happy users of the event and all those fabulous volunteer repairers – thanks to them all! (And to Common Ground cafe for hosting us.)

Also this last weekend …

@Alexandra Mates our repair cafe coordinator was excited to start the day at #fixfestUK in Manchester talking about #RepairCafe #RestartParty!

She also shared a BBC2 programme on the repair cafe movement – how cool to see the culture being revived in public awareness! [link no longer active]

Definitely worth a listen (I just did).

Today at the Oxford Hub volunteer fair – lots of people promoting opportunities to do useful things and quite a few people coming looking for them. Had a few interesting conversations putting out the idea of sharing …

Last week one of our neighbours in Makespace, the Young Women’s Music Project, borrowed our projection screen for an event they were holding.

Great to be able to help.

Just been sorting out the cargo bike that we now have for our own use but also to loan out – both fun(ky) and useful.

It’s not a big space but we’ve finally got some shelving up and the things we already have are stacked, partially sorted, partially inventoried – all progress towards the pilot launch, hopefully in October.

Keep a look out for when we will be open for you to be nosey (= look around) and see what we’ve got and what needs doing (= what you might do with us).

Finally we have the partitions up around our space in Makespace, somewhere to put safely the items we already have in the Library. And somewhere to put the items that we hope to acquire – by donation or, where necessary, by purchase. Somewhere to be able to get on and work towards the opening – soon! – of the Library.

Saturday July 14th was the day of the official launch of the lovely place where we are, Makespace in Jericho. It was a bit of a rush, and lots of hard work, getting it all ready, clean, organised and looking its best (so far, and hopefully from now on) but the collective effort paid off and many people, both neighbours and many others, came to visit/snoop around/chat/enjoy/see how they could do things with some of the sixteen groups, including ourselves, who operate in Makespace.

We spent all afternoon talking with visitors and had huge amounts of enthusiasm for the idea of SHARE Oxford – we made contacts, had offers of potential donations of items, found a few people who said they’d like to get involved (yes, please), met old friends, and generally came away energised.