Due to an apologetic Friday evening phone call from our booked speaker, explaining that she was ‘iced/snowed in’ somewhere in the depths of the countryside, and after many late Friday night and early Saturday morning phone calls between committee members, we managed to put together a very successful meeting for the 26 members who came.
Members had been told that they did not need to bring anything with them for our original speaker, so between all the committee we got together a collection of threads, glitter and Christmas fabrics, other bits; cards, scissors, needles; glue, beads, sequins………. Together with paper patterns and finished samples, the challenge was to make a Christmas card or ‘way out’ Christmas ornament.
In addition I had taken part of my collection of sketch/workbooks for those who might not want to stitch, but just sit quietly and as this meeting was planned to start at 12 noon, we started with a our usual notices which was then followed with a very short talk (sprung on me at the last minute) about my notebooks.
After our packed lunch – with the addition of mince pies, Stollen and chocolates provided by some members (how calorie laden was that!!) the ‘CHALLENGE’ then commenced.
You can obviously eat and drink and stitch at the same time!!
Three of us did not take part in the stitching – me plus 2 others who wanted to read through the sketch books - and it was amazing to see the innovative ideas appearing so quickly in the hands of our expert members – see for yourselves in the pictures below.
Our Joint Chair – Sue Tyldesley had provided two prizes so that we had one for each category – the finalists are shown below -
Caroline was the winner with the card on the left which had a very Christmassy feel. The runners up were Carole and Sue Chisnall.
The ornament section had a lot of entries and the 4 finalists are shown – the winner (John) with the green ‘springy’ tree decoration on the left – the three runners up were Sue C’s cracker, Eileen’s silver Fairy and Helen’s gold angel.
We were amazed at the wide variety of items created in such a short space of time. However the prizes Sue had provided in such a hurry were for ‘ladies only’ – hand creams and the like, so John as winner just had to settle for extra chocolates!!!!!!
After that excitement we of course had our extra special bumper Christmas raffle – 3 large baskets of ‘goodies’ – a truly bumper crop this year with overflowing baskets –
First prize to Karen Hurrell -
Second prize – Pat Bean -
Third prize – Sue Chisnall who seems to be having trouble containing her excitement!!
Then for the colour raffle –going to Angela McLarnon who was amazed at her good fortune!
I think you will see from all the above that it was a very successful afternoon – something different for us and very much appreciated by all who attended. A very relaxed and friendly, chatty afternoon – just what we need currently on a very cold and damp day ‘up north’.
