It’s summer and the weather is lovely, and do I use this opportunity to do things in the garden? No, I’m on a crafting spree and the garden is borderline neglected. Some other day.

Next up on the list of “someday” projects: semi-fancy cloth napkins. Every Christmas and New Year’s and other festive opportunity when I cook semi-fancy food and we bring out the linen tablecloths, we have napkin problems.

Store-bought linen napkins are nice but feel a tad too stiff – formal rather than festive. They’re often too large, more for show than for use. I find them intimidating.

Plain paper napkins are the opposite – too plain.

Printed paper napkins, which at first glance look like the perfect compromise, suck in reality. They can look good but most are unusable: the surface is so slick that when you try to actually wipe your mouth (or fingers, if the semi-fancy meal includes finger food) then they don’t absorb anything.

Today I bought two old linen tablecloths from a second-hand store (Stadsmissionen in Bromma). I’m going to cut them into squares and turn them into napkins. They’ll be homey and invitingly soft and conveniently small.

In fact now that I look more closely at one of the tablecloths I bought, I see it’s made of two large napkins with a strip of lace in between. Looks like they’re mismatched – I didn’t see that until I took this photo. And they’re huge! Each one will be turned into four napkins of more sensible size.

This will be the third incarnation for these napkins – from napkin to tablecloth and then to napkin again (but smaller). What shall I call this, then? Re-upcycling? Up-and-down-cycling?