February 2023 Main Meeting – Pet’s Pantry and Saving the Planet

Our President Melanie welcomed 35 members and 3 visitors.

Our speaker was Karen from the local Pets Pantry. She gave an interesting talk on starting in business and how it has developed over the years. She then shared with us her experiences of a 3 month sabbatical in Laos and Thailand.

We voted on the WI resolutions. Members were then informed of upcoming events, including a Birthday afternoon tea party, a May day outing, a holiday to Bletchley Park and Cambridge, an evening with comedian Jamie Sutherland, a couple of events learning new crafts and the group Spring lunch.

The sub-group leads informed us what was happening in their sub-group and what they were doing to prepare for entries to the Cheshire Show.

Jonty told us about Project Linus, a UK charity with provides new, handmade, washable blankets to provide love, a sense of security, warmth and comfort to children, who are sick, disabled, disadvantaged or distressed

Members of Craft Group have been busy knitting squares which Annette has stitched together to make 3 beautiful blankets which will be sent off for the children to enjoy.

Our next meeting will be on Thursday, 2nd March and the theme will be A Welsh Evening. The competition will be a Welsh Souvenir and members have been asked to bring along a daffodil, preferably unusual, for a display .

Baking Beauties – Jan 2023 – A Family Recipe

This month the topic was a family recipe. Nine members met to offer their recipe, some to honour a family member, others searched very old cook books for inspiration. This resulted in a variety of bakes including a luncheon cake dating back to 1899, egg custard, tea breads, apple cake, walnut bars, Anzec biscuits, meringues and sticky chocolate cake.

We are keen to enter for the Cheshire show this year so we had some discussion about gingerbread as this is one of the classes. Jontyn spoke about the original gingerbread of Ormskirk which dated back to the 1800’s which was served on trains in the area by gingerbread ladies. A lively discussion followed on other gingerbread recipes and ingredients.

Our next meeting is Friday 24th February at 1.30 and members are asked to make ‘Gingerbread people’. This will give us ideas and practice to hopefully generate some Whitley entries in the Cheshire Show.

Art Group – Jan 2023 – A Magical Place

Our topic for this meeting was ‘A Magical Place’ as we hope to inspire some of our group to enter a piece of their work in this category for the Cheshire Show. A few of our group couldn’t make the meeting this month but 6 of us did discuss the theme, and Ann C shared a piece of work that she has already done.

We looked at various ‘magical place’ pictures from the web and also some magical places in literature, to fit the Shows overall theme of ‘Once upon a time’. The group who were with us today struggled a bit with this ‘magical’ theme but 3 of us did have a go at painting Aslan from ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’, while more experienced members continued with their own piece of work.

Our next meeting will be on Monday 27th February at 1.30. The theme is ‘Daffodils’, maybe we can produce some pictures to share at our Welsh meeting the following week. Alternatively members may wish to continue with the ‘magical place’ idea with hopefully at least some entries for the Cheshire Show.

Craft Club – Jan 2023 – Introduction to Crochet

The craft group had a great meeting in January learning about crochet work. Our old friend Joan Pattinson came along to share the many items that she had made over the last 40 years, including one of her very first projects. She had a wonderful display of different items – mats, toys, flowers and her latest project, a beautiful colourful bobble hat. She also had lots of books and magazines with some amazing pieces of work that we could aspire to!

Joan had printed off some instructions for us all to follow and, ably assisted by Annette, she demonstrated how to hold the hook, wrap the wool around our fingers and get started. We all managed to make a chain, though some of us struggled to turn around to get a more substantial piece of work! Several did manage to produce a very respectable ‘square’ of crochet, and the terms ‘double’ and ‘treble’ crochet started to make sense.

It was a real fun afternoon, as ever the mistakes all added to the entertainment. Lovely home made cookies were a bonus!

Thanks very much to Joan for her expertise, Annette for keeping us all on track and to Joan B for handling the refreshments!

Next month we will be discussing ideas for what classes we might want to take part in at the Cheshire Show, our WI hopes to have lots of entries in 2023

2023 Meetings and Activities

January 2023 – Mrs Darlington’s Jams

February 2023 – Pet’s Pantry and Saving the Planet

March 2023 – A Welsh Evening

April 2023 – DIY Surgery

May 2023 – Cheshire Wildlife Trust

June 2023 – A Flower Festival

July 2023 – Living in Styal

August Outing – Meet the LLamas

September 2023 – Chester Uncovered

October 2023 – Members Evening – Morris Dancing

November 2023 – Annual Meeting and Bauble Making

December 2023 – Christmas Party