This past year we have managed to meet in person every month, have taken in 3 British Museum exhibitions,and started meeting in person for craft club again. Sadly we haven’t been able to do any fundraising, but we already have plans for 2023 stalls.
So what did we get up to this year?
January: We had a talk on Victorian clothes with Kat Jungnickel (author of Bikes and Bloomers: Victorian Women Inventors and Their Extraordinary Cycle Wear)
February: This month we got crafty, with a Peruvian inspired embroidery craft activity with Helena
March: This month was our AGM, attended by representatives of Middlesex Federation, and we also had a zoom talk on the history of the WI by Lisa Greenly who joined us remotely from Canada.
April: This month's talk was a fascinating evening 'Eat your Greens' with Jane McLauchlin, all about the domestication and history of the fruit and vegetables we eat today.
May: This month's talk was 'The Hot Spots of the World', an illustrated talk on some of the Volcanoes Liz Mooney has visited on her travels.
June: June was a hands-on evening of making our own fabulously scented wax melts with Antoinette.
July: July was another hands-on session, quite literally this time as Claude taught us how to carry out reflexology hand massages on each other!
Between meetings we also found time to attend the Soho Village Fair in July, and in 2023 we plan to have a stall there.
August: Despite the rain, we went for a walk and talk around St Giles looking at the haunts and history of Charles Dickens and his relationship with the area, led by Jane Palm-Gold.
September: This was a British Sign Language taster session with Lindsey - we learned the alphabet, some basic BSL words, and some of the history and etiquette of BSL.October: This month we tried out faux calligraphy with Jane in a hybrid meeting format, some of us in the hall, some at home and the speaker joining via Zoom. Luckily the tech worked, and we may have more sessions in this format in the future.
November: This month was another crafty evening, as we learned about Madhubani painting and created our own, under the guidance of Nilanjana from KraftGurus.
December: We went for a walk around the Christmas lights of the West End, and then had a Christmas dinner at Tas restaurant.
British Museum Exhibitions
As well as our regular meetings, our members attended the community previews of three major British Museum exhibitions - Stonehenge, Feminine Power and Hieroglyphs.
And towards the end of the year our Craft Club moved from online back to an in-person event, on the 1st Tuesday of every month. At the moment we're pub based, but hoping to find somewhere a bit more craft-oriented, with better lighting, soon!
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