Hobbycraft is offering all WI members a free ball of wool! Just clip the coupon on page 59 of the April issue of WI Life and take it with you the next time you’re headed to Truro!
Author: crowlasludgvanwi
Save the High Street – Do Your Part!
Thorne’s Fruit & Veg in Penzance is doing its part to help save the high street! If you spend £10 at Thorne’s on any visit in the month of April, they’ll give you £1 to pay for two hours’ parking in town.
Malcolm Hendy, who has run the shop with his wife Sue for the past 18 years, says, ““It would be great if we could encourage some of those who currently do all their shopping at the big supermarkets to come into town to do their shopping.”
This is right in line with the WI’s efforts to encourage people to shop in their local high streets.
You can read the full article about Thorne’s in The Cornishman here.
Crafting is Healthy for Your Brain!
Knitting and other crafting can serve as a natural antidepressant says a new study published in The British Journal of Occupational Therapy.
Because crafting stimulates the use of many different areas of the brain – working memory and attention span, visuospatial processing, creativity and problem-solving abilities – there is a hypothesis that it can help keep the brain young by preventing cerebral atrophy and significantly delaying dementia.
As if our new Flying Fingers group didn’t already know this!
In case you don’t know, Flying Fingers meets monthly with the objective of making things for ourselves and others. You can choose to knit clothes for premature babies, you can sew bags to sell at our Farmers’ Market stall or you can just bring along a project you happen to be working on. Any and all crafters are welcome.
The next Flying Fingers get-together is on Monday 7 April at 10am at Val Puddiphatt’s. For more information, get in touch with Lis on (01736) 754146.
So come along and make your brain happy!
Stick with Foncho!
Meet Foncho. He’s a man on a mission. He knows first-hand that cheap bananas threaten farmers’ futures.
Over the past 10 years, the typical price of a banana in the UK has nearly halved, whilst the cost of production has doubled. Foncho thinks this is unfair. And so does the NFWI.
He traveled from his banana farm in Colombia to the UK for Fairtrade Fortnight, to ask Vince Cable to investigate unfair supermarket pricing practices and act to protect the producers of the UK’s favourite fruit.
Click here to sign the petition to make bananas fair. The petition is put forward by the Fairtrade Foundation and is backed by the NFWI.
You can also use the Fairtrade website to find out which local supermarkets stock fairtrade products. Remember, every time you buy a fairtrade banana, it’s a signal to the supermarkets that we value our food, we value the people who grow it and we expect supermarkets to value them too.
Who did their shopping today?
with the CFWI table at Sainsbury’s.
If you paid a visit to Sainsbury’s today, you might have seen some familiar faces!
Our County Federation set up a table at the entrance to Sainsbury’s, and some of us spent the day distributing information about the W.I. and answering questions to women who might be interested in joining.
Braving the cold, we shared our enthusiasm and hopefully recruited a few new members for various Institutes throughout the county.
Diana and Jane were spotted this morning – did anyone else stop by later in the day?
New Wave vs Old Wave?
There’s an excellent piece about the W.I. in the Huffington Post today. Click here to read it.
It’s mainly about new W.I.s, particularly the ‘new wave’ institutes which have been popping up recently and how they differ from more traditional institutes.
It all got me thinking – is there a difference? And I don’t think so. While it’s lovely to have new W.I.s around and especially lovely to know that younger women are interested in joining, I don’t think what we do is really any different from what they do.
Our Crowlas & Ludgvan ladies are certainly not members of the ‘blue rinse’ brigade and neither are any of the other local W.I. members we know!
Like the new Gloucester Road W.I. in Bristol, we have a lot of activities outside of our monthly meeting. Like the Burton Belles, we use social media to keep in touch and get our message out. Like Manchester W.I., our members are an eclectic mix of ages and backgrounds. And like Buns and Roses, we’re interested in everything from crafts to resolutions.
So hats off to Crowlas & Ludgvan! A perfect balance of new and old wave!
International Women’s Day
There was quite a turnout at The Exchange Gallery in Penzance for Saturday’s International Women’s Day event.
Three Crowlas & Ludgvan WI members made presentations about various aspects of the WI and what it means to them: Hazel Brown, Lis Davies and Helen Kestle. There were also speakers from Madron, Carbis Bay, Sheffield, Perranuthnoe and Mount’s Bay.
Presentations included Liz Anderson (Sheffield and Mount’s Bay) discussing WI badges through the years; Hilary Catton (Madron) showing us the gorgeous embroidered tablecloth their members created; Jenny Fitton (Mount’s Bay) regaling us with her adventures in bobbin lace making; and Marjorie Pascoe (Perranuthnoe) showing her amazing knitted farm scene.
Lis Davies spoke about our old Ludgvan banner and our reasons for creating a new Crowlas & Ludgvan banner. Helen Kestle talked about the old Ludgvan WI Sunshine Committee cash book. Hazel Brown finished up the afternoon by showing off some of the beautiful rag rug work our members have done over the years.
In the audience were Gail Allen, Wendy Allen, Shirley Battle, Julie Blewett, Gill Gowland, Kathy Merrett and Charlotte Robinson, as well as lots of others from local institutes.
After the presentations, we all retired to the Exchange cafe for coffee, cake and some good conversation.
All in all, it was a great afternoon and a fantastic way to celebrate International Women’s Day in the company of a roomful of inspiring women.
In case you missed the event, banners from all of the institutes mentioned above are on display at the gallery and will be there until the 27th. If you’re in town, do pop in to see them all – they really do look spectacular!
See more photos of the event here.
(The Exchange Gallery is located on Princes Street, just off Chapel Street.)
Pretty pretty coat hangers!
Earlier today, a group of Crowlas & Ludgvan WI members had a lovely time making padded coat hangers with expert tuition from Jane Twose.
Once we had been shown the techniques we chose our material and started personalising our creations. It was a lovely relaxing day. Thanks so much to Lis Davies for organising it.
(Jane also provided some excellent homemade orange and caramel cake which, appropriately, was cut with a pair of sewing scissors!)
See Hazel’s Paintings!
Our own talented Hazel Brown is going to have some of her paintings on display at Morvah Schoolhouse Gallery from 6-16 March, with a preview on 9 March.
Don’t miss it!
Book Club
Our Book Club meets tomorrow evening to discuss Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief.
If you’d like to join the group, send us an email on crowlasludgvanwi@gmail.com and we’ll make sure you have all the details of this and all upcoming meetings!
Crowlas & Ludgvan WI 