Review of LWEWI's 2021 in pictures

January

We began the year online, with an online tour of the Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition.

February

February saw us online again, this time enjoying a spa night in our own homes with the products and expertise of Temple Spa, hot flannels and all!

March

Our March online meeting was a scavenger hunt around our homes, well done to all who took part!

April

In April we were joined on Zoom by artist Caroline Banks, who led us in a "Play with Drawing" workshop.

May

In May, with lockdown easing, some of us met in person for the first time in 15 months. We had a guided walk around suffragette Covent Garden with Naomi Paxton, and then cocktails to follow!

June

In June we were back online, with a papercutting craft session led by Helena.

July & August: A summer break, with no monthly meetings (although craft club continued)

September

In September we were back to meeting outdoors in person, with a guided walk around our local area of Seven Dials and St Giles with our guide Jane Palm-Gold. 

October

In October a group of us attended the play being put on in our usual meeting place of the Upper Vestry Hall, 'A Play Upon Words', a very funny and well written play with a cast of 3 taking us on a romp through the heyday of Bloomsbury with Roget's thesaurus as our guide!

November

We started the month with a trip to the British Museum, to the community preview of the Peru exhibition

For our monthly meeting we were back in the hall for the first time since early 2020, with a lesson in reading the tarot cards with Geraldine Beskin from Atlantis Books.

December

For our last meeting of the year we headed out of the hall for a walk around the Christmas lights of Seven Dials, Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square, taking in some mulled wine along the way, and finishing with dinner at Zizzi for the group.

ONLINE CRAFT CLUB

Our craft club continued to meet online most 1st Tuesdays of the month, with lots of different exciting and fun things being made between us!

We wait and see what 2022 brings, but hope to be meeting more in person than we have this year. Thanks to all those members who lasted the year, and welcome to the new members who joined us during the year. Happy New Year to you all!

Next Meeting, 17 November: Tarot

For our next monthly meeting we will be back to meeting in person in the Vestry Hall at St George's, for the first time since February last year! We will have plenty of room to spread out in the newly redecorated hall, so the meeting will be Covid secure.

The meeting is on Wednesday 17 November, starting at 6.30pm in the Vestry Hall of St George's Bloomsbury

We're welcoming back regular speaker Geraldine Beskin of Atlantis Books who will be giving us a talk and demonstration of tarot card reading. An hour isn't enough to get into a lot of detail, but she'll give it her best shot.

Meetings are held in the Upper Vestry Hall of St George's Bloomsbury (look for the noticeboard by the gate on Little Russell Street) from 6.30pm to 8.30pm.

All welcome, with £5 charge for non-members. Bring some refreshments to share if you can (we have a kitchen with lots of cleaning equipment etc, so all will be Covid secure), and do email us at londonwestendwi@gmail.com if it's your first visit so we know to look out for you!

Events, December 2021 to April 2022

2021

December 15 - WE will do a walk of the London lights and festive displays and then enjoy dinner and a glass or two of festive cheer at Zizzi's in Central St Giles, an area we now know well thanks to our walk and talk with Jane earlier this year. We have a table booked already, do let us know if you plan to attend so we can adjust the booking if required.

For those who wish to attend, St Georges carol concert is scheduled to go ahead on 22 December 

2022

January 19 - We will welcome Kat Jungnickel, who wrote the book Bikes and Bloomers all about how Victorian women adapted with clothes to allow them to cycle. She also runs a research project and website of the same name. She will hopefully have some clothes to try as well.  This was booked in for early last year… how time flies! But hopefully this will be a good start to the year!

February 16 - We will hold our long-overdue AGM covering 2019 and 2020. More details will follow about the format, and how to stand to be part of the LWEWI committee. After the business is finished, we're going to be getting crafty and painting decorative pebbles to take home or to leave around Bloomsbury for lucky people to find.

March 16 - The Hot Spots of the World.  This is a talk on some of the Volcanoes Liz Mooney has visited on her travels.  Liz is an adventurer who has written about her experiences of traveling as a single woman on her own.  She's been to many places including a trek to Everest base camp.  But for her talk to us she's going to be focusing on volcanoes.  You can read more about her and her adventures here:  https://lizmooney.net/talks/

April 20 - A talk on the Ecology of Vegetables with Jane McLauchlin.

Monthly meeting, 15 September 2021

This month's meeting is on Wednesday 15th September, and we're going to be meeting in person! As the Vestry Hall is still being redecorated, we're off on a jaunt. 

We're delighted to be able to join St Giles artist and curator Jane Palm-Gold for a historical walking tour that takes in the sights and stories of Seven Dials and the notorious parish of St. Giles. Meet at 6pm at Seven Dials, outside the art gallery right on the Dial. Hopefully we'll be able to head for food or a quick drink after the walk, if members are interested.

If you haven't come to one of our meetings before you can email us on londonwestendwi@gmail.com so we know to look out for you. 

 

September to December 2021 Meetings

It's been a while, but we now have a programme of meetings from September to December this year, a mixture of online and in person! Hurrah!

CRAFT CLUB

Craft club meets on Zoom on the 1st Tuesday of every month: details are sent out by WhatsApp to all members, and can be emailed out too. Let us know if you're interested. Join us for an hour of crafting and chatting from 6 to 7pm on:

• 7 September
• 5 October
• 2 November
• 7 December

MONTHLY MEETINGS

Our monthly meeting are going back to in person for the rest of the year, with a mixture of indoor and outdoor activities on the evening of the 3rd Wednesday of the month

Meetings usually start at 6.30pm at St George's Church, Bloomsbury, but times and places for the outdoor events will differ. Full joining details for each meeting will be put on the blog, social media and our email newsletter ahead of the meetings. Visitors and new members are always welcome, drop us an email if you haven't been before so we know to expect you.

15 September: A walk and talk around Phoneix Gardens  and Seven Dials with Jane Palm-Gold. the route is all pretty much compact and begins at Seven Dials, ends at top end of Dyot Street (across New Oxford St). This little area is stuffed full of history, so it should be a fascinating walk. We will try to head to a pub or cafe afterwards for a drink afterwards.

20 October: Back in the Vestry Hall we’ll have a craft session with Helena to make some Christmas wreaths from aluminum cans.  Our aim is to recycle rubbish to make something nice and given it’s so close to Christmas we thought we could make it festive. We should have plenty of drinks cans, and sparkly nail varnish etc to help decorate them, but we'll let you know if you need to bring anything

17 November: Geraldine Beskin from Atlantis Books will give us a talk on Tarot, including the history, the trend and a bit of a demo, which promises to be an interesting evening. Again this will be in the Vestry Hall.

15 December: Out and about, we hope to do a walk around the Christmas lights and festive displays, and perhaps make this a social evening with Christmas dinner somewhere nice.

April to June...

 It's been a while since our last update, for which I can only apologise. Blame real life as the world opens up again!

So, what have we been up to in the last 3 months? Well, we've continued our monthly online craft clubs on the first Tuesday of the month, and we've also had regular monthly meetings. One of them was even In Real Life!!!

We're still planning the rest of the year, so if there's anything you'd like us to organise, do drop us an email at londonwestendwi@gmail.com or post on our WhatsApp group. 

In other news, we've made the sad decision to - for now at least - make our craft club online only instead of in person. We've had a good run at Atlantis Books, but with a number of our crafty members leaving London in the past year we just won't have enough people to make it financially sustainable. Perhaps once things get back to normal and we get more members we'll be able to pick it up again. 

Membership fees are of course due, but we've been having some PayPal issues - bear with us and our Treasurer will be in touch soon with details of how to pay!

CRAFT CLUB

  

MONTHLY MEETINGS

APRIL

In April we had a go at freestyle drawing led by artist Caroline Banks from the comfort of our own home with a workshop "Play with Drawing"- a spot of mindfulness trying to draw plants and objects from memory and with eyes shut - a few of us may have been dubious at the beginning but it really is wonderful fun and very relaxing!

MAY

In May a small group of us met up in person for a real life meeting, a fascinating guided walk around Covent Garden learning about the Actresses' Franchise League with the wonderful Naomi Paxton, followed by pizza and drinks - so nice to be able to see real people again! 

Be sure to check out Naomi's Suffra-Greats card game here: https://www.clavisandclaustra.co.uk/products/suffragreats-game

JUNE

In June we were back online for a craft session, as Helena led us in a papercutting workshop - it's amazing how effective some simple techniques using paper, scissors and a glue stick can look even for beginners. We've all found a new craft to try in card making and other projects!

Feb and March update from LWEWI

February

February brought us our regular online meetings, starting with Craft Club and then treating ourselves to an online spa led by Olivia from Temple Spa

February Craft Club, and we were delighted Sue was able to join us for the first time in ages for felting, knitting, embroidery and jewellery making!

Our main February meeting, and we were joined by Olivia from Temple Spa for an online spa evening in the comfort of our own homes. A wonderfully relaxing evening and the products smelled amazing

Ah, the glamour of an online spa with hot flannels at the ready!

March

In March, we had our regular online meetings again - starting with as ever Craft Club, and following that with an online scavenger hunt at our monthly meeting. Well done to everyone for finding various headgear, telling us about their favourite books, and showing off their magnificent holiday souvenirs!

Craft club, and we're still knitting, card making, and embroidering our way through lockdowns!
Natalie has finished her embroidery, and here it is: amazing work!

Online scavenger hunt, and kudos to Chris for posing with a colander on her head!

Easter

March also brought us Easter, and both Elaine and Jo got into the swing of it making their own Easter treats. Shame we had to share them via WhatsApp rather than try them in person. Hopefully next year...

Jo's hot cross buns fresh from the oven

Elaine's simnel cakes

April 

Bringing us right up to date, our April Craft Club met on Zoom and got on with embroidery, calligraphy and crochet and more, with members joining the call from North East and South West England as well as London!

Join LWEWI

We are currently planning online meetings for the next few months as we wait to see where new rules take us. If you'd like to join LWEWI, do get in touch via londonwestendwi@gmail.com and we can give you more info about our online meetings and WhatsApp group as well as plans for in person meetings when the time is right. 

Membership is now due for 2021/22, and will cost £44 for the year. Note we're currently having PayPal issues, but will be up and running to take payments soon we hope!