Leonard Stanley WI: Dates for your diary

OUR first meeting of the year with the new afternoon time of 2.15pm was well attended and members were wished a Happy New Year from Maureen.

Birthday spring flowers were given to Peggy Bloxham, Maude and Maureen herself. Also welcome to new member Judith Turner.

Gloucestershire News was read with particular points of interest being the Denman Dip, Annual Council Meeting at Cheltenham on March 23, Debate Day on April 21 at Maisemore and Training Days on the Moodle.

Of particular interest was the visit to a Gloucester Mosque on April 12 and 23.

We were lucky to have Janice Cole with us, our ACWW Representative who told us about the 2016 project for clean water in a part of Toga, a small country in West Africa for wells and sanitation.

There is already £400 saved for this worthwhile project and Janice thanked everyone for their old broken jewellery and foreign coins which raises money for ACWW.

Operation Christmas Box had been a huge success, and we had provided 46 boxes – our target now being 50 for 2016!

A thank you card from June Dolphin for our contribution was read out and knitting patterns were available for us to start knitting in these cold winter months.

Members were asked to bring their items to the July 11 meeting, which would be our Ploughman’s lunch so these could be displayed.

The Christmas Lunch will be on January 20 at The Clothiers so not long to wait for another bout of turkey and Christmas pudding.

Resolution slips were handed in, and this year it had been quite a difficult choice as all seemed very worthy.

Tickets were on sale for the Group Rally on April 6, which Stonehouse WI are hosting at St Mathews Hall at Cainscross.

Another date to remember - Jill will be holding an afternoon of scrabble and whist at her home on January 28.

Now to the exciting part of our meeting, Janice Cole from Stonehouse WI showed us how to paint linen shopping bags using paints, pens, water colours, stencils etc.

We were then let loose to use our imagination, flair and talent.

Everyone enjoyed this and not only did we end up with colourful and useful bags, with not one of them the same but it made for a great social meeting with lots of laughter and chat.

Many thanks to Janice for coming along and helping to make this meeting so enjoyable.

Competition for the month was a Christmas decoration with some coming from overseas, some quite old and one handmade by a member’s daughter.

February 8 meeting will be A Musical Afternoon with Robert Crockford and the competition will be for ‘My favourite Soup recipe’.