The WI Tent at the Diamond Jubliee Festival

The Diamond Jubilee Festival in Battersea Park on Sunday 3rd June 2012

The WI Tent needs you!

WI members from across London are needed to help make the WI Tent at The Diamond Jubilee Festival in Battersea Park on Sunday 3rd June 2012 one of the top attractions for the day.  The tent is in prime position, almost directly behind the Peace Pagoda in Battersea Park and there will be deck chairs, a croquet lawn outside and a rose lined red carpeted area with a throne (where you can be knighted throughout the day), plus a crystal cake tier stand is close by with an area for picnic blankets.

There will be craft and NFWI information, archive photography and WI merchandise on display, and space for individual WIs to display items that represent you, and sell some items to raise funds for your WI.  If you would like to use this space, please get in touch with Birdy ASAP (contacts below) to confirm details. We’re hoping that the tent will be a true reflection of all aspects of the immense history of the body of women that is the WI and the unique part that London WI members are playing in its Majesty (no pun intended…!)


WI activities throughout the day
Inside the Tent we will be hosting the Amazing Angel Adoree from The Vintage Patisserie and author of The Vintage Tea Party book www.vintagepatisserie.co.uk, who will be providing some of her exquisite decor splendour as a back drop, as well as running a jubilee rosette making workshop.  Her team of beauties will also be on hand doing vintage hair and make up – roll up roll up for your Victory Curls....

The lovely Lydia Leith will be livening things up with her Temporary Tattoo Parlour - corgi tattoo anyone? And will also have emergency Diamond Jubilee sick bags if everything gets a bit too much…more details can be found here: http://www.lydialeith.com/
The Tent itself will be decorated with a full host of WI memorabilia but craft offerings from WI members across the UK will also be on display throughout the Festival including the knitted crafts and the flag contributions (see previous notifications).
Call for cakes
As part of the celebrations we are asking you to help create the most imaginative and tasty jubilee themed cakes possible and contribute these to the day.  A giant diamond encrusted cake stand is being specifically designed and built as a centre piece to the event – it will take pride of place within the Tent – to display and showcase the cakes of the WI.

WI members will then be running the cake stand throughout the afternoon and selling the cakes to the hungry general public, offering whole cakes for picnic groups, and individual slices.

The money raised will go to those who bring receipts on the day and wish to be reimbursed, and any excess profit will be divided equally between those WIs that volunteer on the day.
Cake details
The cakes should be no bigger than 8 inches diameter and must not contain any fresh cream as a filling.  Please provide a full list of ingredients along with your name and contact details with your cake.  For further information on making cakes for public consumption, please visit http://www.food.gov.uk/

Please let Birdy know in advance if you are planning to make a cake so we can gauge if we will have enough on the day to keep the hungry public happy.
The Great Cake Gathering
Birdy will be on site at Battersea Park from 11am till 6pm on Saturday 2 June and there will be vehicle access to drop your cakes off.  Unfortunately there is NO vehicle access and some closing of roads on Sunday 3 June – the day of the event – so it may be easier for you to drop off your cakes the day before.  If you are volunteering on the day please bring any cakes with you then – after you have informed Birdy.

There may be a third option for getting your yummy offerings onto the site by contacting Birdy directly to arrange pick ups from around London on Friday 1 June as we may have access to a car/van to do some pick ups.

For all options please contact me on birdyat@gmail.com or 0777 4243 206

Volunteering on the day
If you would like to come down and volunteer on the Sunday to represent your WI, please let Birdy know if you wish to attend.  The idea for the day is to have enough WI members volunteering so that we can split up the jobs of the day, including:

• Discussing WI membership and what you get out of being a WI member with the general public
• Running the craft activities within our tent (mosaic making - www.artmosaicdesign.co.uk)
• Serving the cakes from the cake tier.

Four members will also be needed to make medals with the public on the day.  If you have experience of using knitting machines before, please get in touch with Birdy and let her know.
Tasks can be swapped throughout the day and there will be plenty of free time to explore the rest of the Festival – the line up for the day looks amazing.  We would like to involve as many WI members as possible so we all get to enjoy the day and watch the magnificent spectacle of the 1000 boat Royal flotilla.

The event will only run as planned with everyone’s help, so please get in contact with Birdy if you wish to attend so she can sort passes for the day for you.  All Volunteers will be given a lovely WI Sash (provided by NFWI) to wear on the day to identify us to each other and the public.

The event is running from 12pm until 7pm with the park being open from 10am till 9pm. The plan is to organise a rota with three-hour shifts – this will be organised once everyone has been in touch.

We will also need some help before and after the event with set up (Saturday 2 June) and pack down – please let Birdy know separately if you can help with these out of hour times.

Many thanks in advance – please see general details and travel information for the event below.

Birdy, London WI Diamond Jubilee Event
birdyat@gmail.com 0777 4243 206
http://www.thamesdiamondjubileepageant.org/TeaAndCake.aspx

TICKETS

Tickets are £5 for Adults (booking fee included).
Tickets for Children aged 12 and under are free; children must be accompanied by an Adult.
Tickets are available through Ticketmaster and can be purchased here:http://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/event/35004891F49696B3#

OPENING AND CLOSING TIMES

The festival programme commences from 12.00 and concludes at 19.00. Please note that the gates to the park will open from 10.00 and will close at 21.00.

GETTING THERE

Nearest Stations: Clapham Junction, Fulham Broadway and Victoria

PARKING

General Parking is not available at Battersea Park. Travel on Public Transport is strongly recommended.
There will not be designated parking for coaches or other methods of private transport.

ROAD AND BRIDGE CLOSURES

There will be multiple road and bridge closures in place on 3rd June for the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant. Road closures will commence at 7am, with some bridges from Battersea Bridge to Tower Bridge being closed to road traffic from that time until early evening. Details of the precise locations and timings of these traffic disruptions, as well as all other important information will be available from 16th May and communicated via http://www.thamesdiamondjubileepageant.org/TeaAndCake.aspx.

DISABLED ACCESS

In Battersea Park there is a designated viewing area for the Pageant for those requiring disabled access. Please note this area will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. For more information, please contact info@thamesdiamondjubileepageant.org

April Meeting: Rob Ryan

Lovely Shoreditch Sisters, a reminder that our April meeting is rsvp only, please do not show up unless you have had email confirmation from us that you are on the list.

Apologies, but space constraints and health and safety had to dictate this!

Knit, natter and crochet

I will go ahead and quote our treasurer, Jen Luk, here when talking about our most recent and highly successful knit and natter sesh, “My world = turned upside down”.

What had caused this inversion I hear you ask?  Well, I crocheted a granny square.  Yes, woollen crafts have finally got their hooks (no pun intended!) into me.  After months of just nattering, I am now a bona fide crafter too.  Admittedly I find it impairs my ability to speak as my tongue is hanging out the side of my mouth, but surely that’ll improve!

If you would like to come along to knit and natter please do, you don’t have to be a member, it’s just an opportunity to get together, craft (any craft welcome) or just natter.  It’s always two weeks after our main meeting, check out the calendar here Drop in from 6.30pm to  Leon in Old Spitalfields Market.  They give us a table, we order their food, symbiotic, like.

It’s a great opportunity to learn something new, perfect something you did as a kid but can’t quite remember anymore, get some help with a tricky pattern or advice on where something went wrong.  It’s an unintimidating mix of professional knitters and crocheters and total beginners who must be given more elbow room so as not to poke people’s eyes out.  We also have a ravelry group where you can share tips, get help and generally indulge your knitty activities.


Hope fully see you at the next one, remember, Christmas is coming and everyone loves a hand-crafted gift.  Unless you’re my brother, in which case it’ll be the usual CD…

We came, we saw, we pom-pommed

This Monday just gone a few of us went along to Shoreditch House for Company Magazine’s High Street Fashion Awards.  After deciding what to wear, what to make and getting past security (who had us down as performers…cue quizzical looks) we found we’d been given a lovely little area in one of the rooms.  The Shoreditch Sisters who got there early had done a brilliant job decorating it with our bunting, banners and bundles of yarn, all ready for us to show those fashionistas a few things about pom-pom making.

It was a great opportunity for us to display the campaigns work we’ve been doing on our Embroideries campaign to end FGM (female genital mutilation), show the sort of activities we get up to on a monthly basis and get some lovely ladies involved with our craft-y activities.

It was, to be honest, dead glamorous, there were lovely cocktails and small bowls of amazing food doing the rounds, everyone in their best outfits and a small smattering of celebs – we spotted Pixie Lott there to collect an award for her dresses at Lipsy, Jameela Jamil looking statuesque and with a perfect fringe of glossy hair (grrr) and this month’s cover girl Caroline Flack.

More important than all of that though was that when we briefly abandoned our stations to have some (no doubt highly embarrassing) official type photos taken, we came back to find we’d been totally usurped by curious and crafting fashionistas, carefully overseen by our own Ms Maddison.  We are literally conquering the world, one pom-pom at a time.

The photos here were taken by President Becky but if you want to see some of the official ones, follow this link and check out pictures 35 and 50…  Not my best side BTW.  And the beautiful headbands a few of us are sporting were kindly lent to us by Elnaz Niknani.

October Meeting: Crochet, cheese and fast fashion...

Yet another fabulous meeting has been and gone with so many amazing things to report!

There was enough cheese from the lovely Cheese Society to give everyone a taster.  Thanks to anyone who brought biscuits and chutney, President Becky’s chutney and Hannah’s homemade biscuits provided me with a good meal certainly…if you didn’t get to try one that may be because I scoffled quite a few.  They were great though.

Credit Sophia Spring 

For anyone who, having been introduced to crochet, wants to go on to create amazing crochet based things the lovely Martha has supplied me with some links.  I, for one, am cracking my knuckles, putting the kettle on and gearing up for a session aimed at creating my very own granny blanket to keep me warm of a winter’s evening.

Credit Sophia Spring

Credit Sophia Spring

• This one is of a years worth of granny square designs, it's a project of a girl who makes one a day!  http://craftyminx.typepad.com/a_granny_a_day/

• A lovely blog in which this post is all about hexagon granny squares in blanket form.
  http://oneloopshort.blogspot.com/2009/07/super-simple-hexagon.html

• And last but not least, this site has clear instructions and a videos for crochet, some are both left and right handed, which is handy…(boom, boom) 
  http://www.craftyminx.com/crochet-school/

Lyla from TRAID (Textile Recycling for Aid and International Development) came and gave us a talk on the work that they do, including the inspirational way that they reuse and recycle clothes that are past their best.  We (the western world) now go through more clothing than ever before and much of it is just thrown into landfill when we’ve worn it a few times, fast and disposable fashion.  The impact of this on the planet and people is immense.  Whilst we see new ranges coming into shops every few weeks, for the workers making those clothes it means cutting wages, shortened turn around times and worsening conditions.

Credit Sophia Spring

Credit Sophia Spring

If you want to find out more check out their website for information on where to donate your old clothes and where their shops are so you can keep your wardrobes stocked.  They run workshops on recycling clothes in their Camden and Shepherds Bush shops too of an evening so maybe see some of you there!

If you were moved by the talk into action there are a number of template letters on this blog which you can use to send to retailers to express your views.

We were very excited to be visited by the amazing photographer Sophia Spring, who you may have seen snapping away and who took all the photos here.  To see more photos of Sophia's photos from the night please check out our facebook page.

  

Next month will be our AGM.  All very serious, members will be electing our committee, President and VPs, Secretary and Treasurer…plus potentially some other roles we’d like people to take on.  We will be starting early to get the official WI biz out of the way so that we can move onto making Christmas decorations – bring on the glitter!!  

October's meeting - Crochet and Fast Fashion with Traid

LOVE FASHION, HATE IT'S IMPACT?

RSVP to the Facebook Event

Free to members, £3 to non-members
Special membership offer : Join in October and get 15 months for the price of 12, only £31.50, which is £2.10 per meeting, plus members get the bi-monthly WI Life magazine, a discount booklet of vouchers in January and priority emailing about meetings and workshops, invites to events and discount membership to the new cinema in Hackney.

Last month was a bit of a squeeze into the small but perfect alternate venue, Time for Tea, with not enough elbow room to learn how to crochet, so we are going to try it again. Having seen the crochet granny blanket scarf Henry Holland is flogging this season for a whopping £400+, we'll be learning how to make the latest thing.

We'll have a bag of wool and assorted a few spare hooks, but please bring your own hook if you can (and if you have any you could lend to our sisters, mark them with a dab of nail varnish). Also if you can already crochet please come and share your skills or drag along a friend who can to join our crack team of crocheters.
Then we'll be meeting lovely Lyla from Traid to learn more about what they do. Traid stands for Textile Recycling for Aid and International Development. Traid are currently working in partnership with the WI and War on Want on our national Fast Fashion campaign.

High street clothing is increasingly being called 'fast fashion'.
Like fast food, it is mass produced and designed for instant gratification, but carries with it hidden environmental and social impacts.

This surge in demand for disposable clothing has a host of negative impacts for people and the planet. The WI believe it is important that the people making the clothes we buy are paid a living wage in decent working conditions. We also care about the environmental impact of fashion. 900,000 million items of clothing end up in landfill every year. Low priced, low quality dispobable clothing is often synthetic and doesn't decompose.

Even if you can't make it to the meeting, there are some draft letters on either the environmental impact or the conditions and low pay of garment workers on our campaigns page for you to personalise and send to your favourite brands.

September's meeting at Time for Tea 110 Shoreditch High Street

The Shoreditch Sisters invite you to our next meeting.

RSVP to the Facebook event link

Tuesday 27th September 7-9pm

Free for members, £3 for non-members

We will be continuing with our usual collision of craft and feminism this month.

Our guest speaker is the living legend Efua Dorkenoo, founder of FORWARD UK, author of "Cutting the Rose" and currently the Advocacy Director of the FGM Program at Equality Now. Eufa was part of the 1970's women's movement and was the first person to put FGM on the UK agenda 30 years ago, she is a true hero and inspiration. She will share with us the amazing work she is doing and has done campaigning against FGM. The Shoreditch Sisters have been working to bring the issue of FGM into the public consciousness, through our Embroideries Quilt and appearances in newspapers and on the radio. Eufa is the godmother of all FGM campaigning and we are really  excited to welcome her.

After the inspirational talk, we'll be learning how to crochet with a group of friends and members of the Shoreditch Sisters, the East End WI and the Borough Belles. If you have a crochet hook and wool please bring them, but as usual we will have some spare hooks to lend out and a wool stash. If you have a spare hook you are willing to lend out for the evening, mark it with a dab of nail varnish, so we can get it back to you at the end of the night.