The spirit and awesomeness of people in the sugru community just blows me away.

A bunch of the stories featured this month will show you why. Sometimes it's not about the finish or skill of the sugru-er. Sometimes what makes a fix or hack really exciting is the effect it has on peoples' lives.

A little patch to a mosquito net helps a surgeon work better in Haiti

Before leaving to work in a hospital in Haiti, Eric decided to pack some sugru. He figured it might come in handy.

While working in this remote Haitian hospital, he met an anesthesiologist who told Eric that he was having trouble sleeping because he kept getting bitten at night by mosquitos. 

"He showed me a tear in the wire mesh screen, and we used sugru, the two of us working together from the inside and outside to seal the opening. It did the trick, and helped him sleep!" — Eric, Connecticut.

Funny how such a humble thing — a patch to a mosquito net — could help someone like this do his job better!

Beautiful photographs celebrate the engineers on a floating hospital in Togo

Jean-Jacques from Philadelphia spent time working on a floating hospital off West Africa. While there he started working on a photography project called Everyone is Photogenic to celebrate those people that are often taken for granted — in this case, the engineers below deck.

"Lighting was bad, and it's too crowded to bring lights down there. All the walls and ceilings are metal, so I had the idea to hack my flash with sugru and magnets so it could attach and angle anywhere I wanted!" - Jean-Jacques, Philadelphia.

The engineers are definitely photogenic! Check out the photos on his website.

(Inspired about the possibilities of sugru and magnets? Get yourself some sugru and do it!)

A tiny hack to a pair of glasses makes a real difference

A sugru-er called Robert emailed us this week to thank us for his sugru. 

"My wife has a medical condition that means she has a shunt and catheter system running under her scalp, between skin and skull, behind her right ear. Recently she had undergone a series of surgeries which meant her glasses were causing her a lot of discomfort. Thanks to sugru, I was able to hack a small addition to the arm of her glasses that removed the pressure and she's so much more comfortable now."

Rock on Robert! sugru might have helped, but it's not much without your ingenuity and lateral thinking.

BRCK - the backup generator for the internet, prototyped with sugru!

BRCK was invented by a team in Nairobi and funded through Kickstarter. Internet connectivity in most of the world is intermittent - so these guys set out to solve that problem for the world they live in - Africa.

It would need to be physically robust, able to connect to multiple networks, be a hub for all local devices, and have enough backup power to survive a blackout.

We loved the project so we got in touch with them to say so. Their reply was awesome.

Erik, from the team, said "I can't tell you how much we love sugru.  We had a joke during the early prototyping that BRCK was a connectivity device made entirely out of love, kapton tape, and sugru! We've used it in every prototype for little fixes to 3D prints that arrived chipped, adjustments, mounts and making whole buttons." How cool is that?!

Retail news : MoMA New York, Maplin and more

Woohoo! We're so excited about this - sugru is now stocked in the two MoMA stores in New York. Someday, I hope it will be considered a design classic enough to be in the 'collection' like LEGO and the BIC pen. But for now, I'm over the moon it's in the store.

We're also super happy that sugru is now be stocked in 30 Maplin stores and all 17 Oswald Baily outdoor stores across the UK, and 23 Micro Center Computer stores in the US. Check out our growing stockists page. As always though, if there's still not a stockist near you, with (almost) global shipping at cost price, our website is the place to top up your supply!

A milestone for sugru - is imitation the highest form of flattery...?

Over the summer we had some reports of 'fake' sugru being sold on a number of Chinese wholesale sites. Despite having a granted patent in China, of course this got us worried. It was difficult to get our hands on it, but this week a package arrived. Although it looks like sugru, these guys have just packaged up play-dough!

The packaging is pretty convincing though! So beware buying sugru from unauthorised resellers. You might be very disappointed when you go to use it. I might be naive, but isn't this a milestone for any product / brand?

Great times at the World Maker Faire in New York

We absolutely loved meeting so many amazing people at our first New York Maker Faire two weeks ago - it was two days of non-stop banter and idea swapping! Massive thanks to all our volunteers who were incredible championing the cause, and everyone who came by.

and... Hack of the Month! Make a prescription Google Glass.

Google Glass is from the future. I've used it myself, and it's pretty amazing - a little computer you can talk to, that sits in front of your eye. Funny then when incredibly hi-tech futuristic products come up against the most mundane real world reality like "How do I wear my Google Glass and my glasses at the same time?"

Will from New York solved that problem! He took his Glass apart, hacked both items with sugru and a magnet and now his Glass fits on the side of his glasses! Very very clever and cool.

For a chance to win Hack of the Month, just get some sugru, fix, hack or make some stuff and send us some photos for a chance to win loads of sugru and a lovely t-shirt.

Keep on fixing, hacking and making. See you next month. — Jane

P.S. I keep forgetting to mention here - I'm thrilled to be a finalist in the prestigious EY Entrepreneur of the Year for 2013 in Ireland. Cheer me on!

P.P.S. Thanks so much everyone for all the lovely messages you sent me in August after our wedding, seriously, you guys are so cool!