Courses, Craft Fairs and Cakes.

Well what a run we’ve had. Aside from the incessant gales and rain, flooding across the country, and general winter grey-ness, we’ve had Christmas, the new year, and plans for the near future.

I haven’t had too much time to work on new tutorials, it’s been busy in the run-up to Christmas, keeping up with orders, buying and wrapping presents, cooking, cleaning…you get the picture, we were all there. Hopefully now the dust has settled we can get started on the next design (attempts today saw a possible pendant turn into a possible bracelet…how did that happen???). I have however been able to play a little with wire, with some interesting results, and a couple of results I am really proud of.

 

 

Meanwhile, my friend Carol, owner of GHG Beads, near Norwich has invited me to do some workshops in her shop. To say I’m over the moon is an understatement, I’m thrilled to bits. I was going to do some polymer clay workshops in the late summer, but it didn’t happen for one reason and another, but this time we have definitely booked the dates…three months of Saturdays in fact, with various courses, including beadwork, polymer clay and wire weaving. The wire weaving has left me in a bit of a panic as I’ve only just learned about it myself, so I need to modify some of the things I’ve done as I was working from someone else’s tutorials, and make them more my own, and get a tutorial written up.

Anyway, any readers in the Norwich area, If you’d like details of the courses I’ll be doing, there are plenty of places available, and they can be found on GHG Beads website HERE!

Meanwhile, with my partner’s amputee group, things are taking small steps forward, and all in the right direction. I spoke with a former director of Limbcare UK, who advised that if I wanted help from the medical profession we would be better off offering our services as a service user group, as well as a support group. I made enquiries at the limb centre, and they were very interested, so I have to get back to them later this month and we’ll get things organised. Almost immediately after I finished that phone call, the one place we hadn’t yet contacted about the support group, the Pine Cottage Amputee Rehabilitation Centre, phoned us. They had heard of us through Equal Lives, and invited us to come and introduce ourselves to some of the current residents. We did this the very next day, and it was a very fruitful meeting, though some were not from Norwich, and we now know we need to see about groups in their immediate locality too, that is a plan for later in the year.

Meanwhile, the Royal British Legion Hall, where we were holding our meetings, still has an uncertain future, so we have made enquiries into using the Wensum Community Hall, which to be honest has far better wheelchair access and car parking. So from February we will be using that as our meeting place, and in April, will be holding a craft fair. A mere mention of it on Facebook has produced a lot of enquiries, but we are still looking to fill one or two places with either, knitted items, art, woodwork, pottery and ceramics, papercrafts and such. Candles, crochet, jewellery are all full with one or two in reserve. This will be held to raise funds for Walkon Crafters, and will be on April 12^th, 10.00am to 4.00pm, tables will be £12 each. For buyers there will be a small fee at the door, with a raffle ticket, and we’re hoping for donations of some lovely prizes, still to be arranged, but hopefully will include a butcher’s voucher, chocolate, a teddy, more chocolate, and other goodies.  If you would like to find out more about a table, please contact Chris on our facebook page and leave a message.

And finally, the cakes part. My grandchildren were with me for the day and I thought, instead of playing card games, as it was set to be too cold and miserable for walking in the woods, we could make and decorate cupcakes. I have to say it was one of my better ideas, they loved it, a suitable mess was made, and lots of fun was had by all. I will say the youngest’s face when I told her she was cooking her own tea, was a picture. ‘I’m not cooking!’ she said, then realised that all the cupcake decorations on the side were there for a reason. It was a lovely afternoon.