Later this month, we have an outing to the lovely St Hilary Church and the adjacent Heritage Centre. For anyone who hasn’t been to the church before, you’ll be amazed at the gorgeous 1920s Newlyn School paintings there.
The church was transformed during Rev. Walke’s time at St Hilary, due in part to his wife Annie who was an artist in Newlyn and whose friends were commissioned to help decorate the church. It’s an extraordinary story!
It occurred to us that, after our visit, you might be interested in hearing more about Bernard Walke. On Thursday 17 July, there will be a talk about him as part of this year’s Penzance LitFest! Speaker Lesley Michell was instrumental in setting up the St Hilary Heritage Centre and will be talking about Walke’s fascinating life.
If you’d like to come along on the St Hilary Church visit scheduled for 20 June, please contact Kathy Merrett on 757107 or by email on kathleenmerrett@btinternet.com.
To book tickets for the Penzance LitFest, click here.
A little addendum to our Royal Cornwall Show blog entry from a few days ago!
Beth Marshall, one of our talented Crowlas & Ludgvan crafters, entered the Barbara Reed Trophy competition at the Show. She didn’t win a prize, but it was her very first time entering and I think the bag she made is great!
The theme this year was ‘a bag suitable to take on a parish walk’. We’d be proud to take that beautiful bag on our walk!
Well done, Beth!
We know Crowlas & Ludgvan WI is full of creativity and talent! Next year if you don’t fancy joining the group and putting together the Cup competition entry, why not enter the Barbara Reed Trophy competition? We’ll let you know next year’s theme as soon as possible!
And, from Saturday, here are Colleen Lewis and Gill Gowland looking very happy as they help with teas in the WI Marquee.
For those of you who didn’t know, a small team of Crowlas & Ludgvan WI members has been hard at work for the past month or so working on our entry for the Royal Cornwall competition.
The theme this year was ‘A Parish Walk’, and Wendy Allen, Shirley Battle, Di Curnow, Helen Kestle, Val Puddiphatt and Jane Twose made up our team.
The four elements of the exhibit were cookery (an item of Cornish fayre to sustain you on your walk), a craft item for your walk, a photograph of a gate along your walk and a floral arrangement to depict a cottage garden.
Shirley looks a bit concerned as she stages our entry on the Wednesday before the Show opens.
Jane made us a fabulous Cornish seafood pasty, with a delicious filling of crab, monkfish, prawns and saffron. Wendy took a beautiful photo of a gate. Shirley came through as always with a lovely floral display. And, finally, our craft item was a little ‘Field Notes’ notebook for a walker to jot down details about plants he or she found on the walk – Helen and Jane made handmade paper (with instruction from Gail Allen), Di embroidered a stunning flowery cover for the notebook and Val filled it with spectacular watercolours of flowers and plants.
The best part of our exhibit (we thought) was our staging. At the centre of the exhibit was a mini stile on which we placed the pasty and the notebook. The base of the display was covered with broken bits of slate with scattered moss, bark and pinecones. It all looked so beautiful!
St Breward WI came second.
In the end, we came fifth out of 29 entries which we were very pleased with. It’s only our second time entering and we’re still learning the ropes! Our highest scores came for Interpretation, for which we were given 19/20 (“A lovely interesting idea well displayed”); Staging, for which we received 18/20 (“A very attractive entry. The stile is the right proportion.”); and Shirley’s flower arrangement which also received 18/20 (“Creative and imaginative. Delicate colour harmony. Really charming.”)
There were some really wonderful entries this year so we were all delighted to have done as well as we did.
A ginormous thank you goes out to the entire team, as well as Gail Allen, Ted Battle and the incredible John Curnow who built our stile and without whom we’d have been sunk!
And finally, a photo of some of our tireless members after finishing their stint serving tea in the WI marquee at the Show on Friday:
Julie Blewett, Val Puddiphatt and Wendy Allen
Gill Gowland and Colleen Lewis also volunteered and served teas on Saturday.
Thank you to everyone who helped both with the competition entry and with the teas!
The weather was definitely in our favour this morning as a group of us were treated to a wonderful tour of Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, led by Dr Neil Armstrong, creator of the gardens. What we’d thought was going to be a rainy day turned into an absolutely perfect one.
Dorothy Oliver and Kathy Merrett.
Most of you will probably remember Neil’s talk to our group last October. We were so inspired by what he had to say and were delighted when he offered to give us a tour.
Sue Knights, Ruby, Jane Twose and Pam Smith listen to Neil Armstrong talking about the Skyspace.
Neil led us along tranquil paths around ponds overhung with ferns, through an exotic woodland of palms and bamboos that felt almost like a jungle and emerging onto arid slopes with breathtaking views over to St Michael’s Mount.
Dappled sun on Seymour Tremenheere’s bridge (which bears his intitials and the date 1849).
All the while he pointed out unusual plants, running through their names faster than my brain could keep up with!
Nestled at various spots throughout the garden are spectacular sculptures and works of art, spaced as Neil explained to us, “randomly, but evenly”. We saw James Turrell’s wonderful Skyspace, the beautiful ‘Black Mound’ charred oak piece by David Nash and two pieces by the very talented Kishio Suga.
Tim Shaw’s ‘Minotaur’ – new this year.
We were told about a new sculpture which will be arriving tomorrow – a highly-polished silver skip! It will be placed near the entrance to the gardens. “People can make up their own minds about it,” said Neil. You read it here first!
After our tour, we sat outside in the glorious sunshine and had lunch at The Lime Tree Cafe. Over delicious plates of food, we talked about morning and how much we’d appreciated Neil sharing with us his incredible passion for the gardens. If you haven’t yet been, you’re missing out on something very special!
Jane Twose, Tracy (Pam Smith’s sister) and Pam Smith enjoy the sunshine.
There was a sea of pink this evening on the Penzance harbourfront as Julie Blewett, Helen Kestle, Pippa Lilley and Beth Marshall (along with Beth’s daughter Sam who’s visiting for the week) volunteered at Cancer Research UK’s Race for Life.
We arrived early and were briefed on our role working in the Admin Marquee. Our job involved signing in any racers who didn’t have numbers, answering all sorts of questions from the public and guarding our box of safety pins very carefully!
Sam and Beth got into the spirit of things and were even on stage getting the crowds going.
Helen particularly enjoyed her Madonna-moment, wearing a very important radio headset.
We worked hard, but had a great time, and it was all for a wonderful cause. The atmosphere and camaraderie among the racers was really special with everyone coming together for a common goal.
Over 900 women and girls raced, most dressed in amazing pink get-ups.
It was a completely rewarding experience and we hope to join in again next year … though next time, instead of volunteering, we may try to put together a team and join in the 5K walk!
Last night’s Resolutions Meeting provided members with a lot to think about as we cast our vote for or against this year’s NFWI resolution.
Our speakers were Dr Gillian Saville, a consultant from the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro who deals with transplants; and Joanna Nankervis, a 12-year-old girl from Penzance who received a kidney transplant nearly two years ago.
Joanna Nankervis shows off her Transplant Games medal as she talks to us about her experience as a kidney transplant recipient.
Little Joanna stole the show. She gave her own Power Point presentation, describing her experiences with dialysis through to her transplant and recovery, and on to her great successes at the Transplant Games. Joanna, who’d like to be an underwater photographer, when she grows up, brought along her proud mum Helen and grandmother Lyn to our meeting. Her story was truly inspiring and the applause we gave her was testament to that.
Gill then gave us the professional’s perspective with facts and figures that were at times staggering. Although 90% of people say they would accept a donated organ if they needed it, the percentage of those who say they are willing to donate is much lower. We discussed the new system in Wales, whereby people who have neither opted in nor out of organ donation will be assumed to have opted in. Gill talked about the fact that not only does organ donation save lives, it also enhances lives. There is no greater example of an enhanced life than Joanna Nankervis.
Following both speakers’ presentations, we had a lively and engaged discussion and question-and-answer session after which we cast our votes on the NFWI resolution which reads as follows:
The NFWI notes that three people die every day whilst waiting for an organ transplant. We call on every member of the WI to make their wishes regarding organ donation known, and to encourage their families and friends, and members of their local communities to do likewise.
I’m pleased to report that Crowlas and Ludgvan WI voted unanimously to support the resolution. Our vote will be taken by our link delegate to the AGM in Leeds next month.
There’s a great little article about organ donation and the WI on the Western Morning News website which mentions the talk some of us heard at Spring Countdown earlier this year and which quotes CFWI Chairman Kathy Reed. You can read the article here.
If any of you is interested in joining the NHS Organ Donor Register, you can find the link to the website Gill mentioned last night here. As she explained, it allows people to be very specific about which organs they would be willing to donate.
Today a group of us met to learn the art of making Dorset buttons – with varying degrees of success, I should add!
If you’ve not heard of Dorset buttons, they’re hand-made buttons which were popular from the early 17th century until they were rendered obsolete by machine-made buttons in the mid-19th century.
To make a button, you begin with a metal ring and some embroidery silk.
From there, it gets a bit complicated as you cover the ring and then create spokes of silk to make a button in the cartwheel pattern.
After a great deal of intense concentration …
Our end results weren’t too bad!
After a lunch break and a lot of laughing, we turned our attention to traditional fabric buttons in the afternoon. Embellished with embroidery and beads, they were really lovely.
A big thank you to Lis who organised today’s workshop, to Gail who hosted and acted as tutor and to Charlotte and Sue Martin who were invaluable in helping us untangle our threads!
It occurred to us that, after our visit, you might be interested in hearing more about Bernard Walke. On Thursday 17 July, there will be a talk about him as part of this year’s Penzance LitFest! Speaker Lesley Michell was instrumental in setting up the St Hilary Heritage Centre and will be talking about Walke’s fascinating life.
Crowlas & Ludgvan WI 