Things to do during online meetings

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Yesterday evening I had to attend an online meeting via Zoom. This is something I rarely do, thankfully, as I really hate seeing myself on screen, I always look absolutely awful; I can’t tell you how many times over the years I have said ‘Thank goodness video phones haven’t been invented yet!’ and now they have… but I digress. Luckily for me I didn’t really have to participate too much, apart from voting on a few things, so I didn’t actually need to remove the sticky tape over my laptop camera. But I did need to be there, so I prepared in advance with things to do while I listened. I couldn’t really do anything noisy so I opted for some hand sewing. I mentioned a couple of days ago that we installed a curtain over the front door. We opted not to have it drag on the floor, but to leave it raised up slightly and to compensate with a draught excluder. Of course we didn’t have one yet but I did have odds and ends I could use, including some padded lining material from an old cool bag plus a pile of old socks (clean ones!) I collected to make sock gnomes quite a while ago. I selected a couple of longish socks, stuffed them both with other socks rolled up and stuffed inside each other until I had two sausages, then I laid them end to end, rolled them up in some padding, enclosed this in the leg from an old pair of Little One’s worn-out pyjamas, then rolled it all up inside the padded fabric from the cool bag. Then while the meeting was going on I was able to sew the whole thing together. The result – a new draught excluder for our front door, with the added bonus that it used up half the old raggedy things I wanted to get rid of! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2026.