Monday 25 June 2012

Competition Time - Design the Frome WI Banner!

Many WI groups have banners that they display at public events. As Frome WI is a new branch, we currently don't have a banner, and we thought that it would be fun to design and make one as a group.

The plan is to hold a competition to select the design of the banner. The chosen design will then be made by the branch at a craft-a-long picnic.

Guidelines for the competition are:
  • The banner will be mounted on a T-frame (see examples in the links below)
  • Maximum size of 1 metre x 1 metre
  • The design should be suitable for a group project (eg different parts could be made by different people?)
  • Please include brief details of how you imagine it will being constructed
  • The committee will pick the top 3 designs
  • These will be shown at the July meeting for members to vote on
  • All voting will be done blind / by secret ballot
  • Deadline - 9th July 2012
  • Email designs to  wi.frome@gmail.com
  • Contact a member of the committee if you cannot email the design and want to submit it by hand / post

Have fun designing!!

Example photos of WI banners on the internet:






Saturday 23 June 2012

June meeting minutes... another wonderful evening full of talented people and of course some wine and cake!

WI minutes

General meeting
Thursday 20th June 2012
Venue – United Reform Church Hall, Whittox Lane Frome
Present: Eileen Hurd (WI advisor)
Laura Francis
Storm Fagan

1. The meeting began at 7pm and approximately 40 people attended.

2. Storm welcomed members to the meeting and informed members that there were some important dates to be shared.

3. Kilmersdon WI have invited 6 members to their annual dinner. Anyone interested to contact Storm. Storm will post details on the blog. Members without PC access can phone Storm.

4. Gilly will be co-ordinating an entry to the Frome Cheese show. All interested to contact her.

5. Storm introduced the curator of the Bath fashion museum Rosemary Harden. She then delivered a talk to the members about the influence of sport in fashion over the last few decades. She used slides to support her talk, making links between items such as the development of ladies swim wear with lower backed dresses, riding jackets with a more tailored look on the high street and the advent of the shorter tennis skirt with the beginnings of the mini skirt on the catwalk. At the end Rosemary fielded many questions from our members. Rosemary handed out leaflets for the museum and encouraged all to visit. Immediate feedback from the talk was very positive.

You can visit the website for more information http://www.museumofcostume.co.uk/

6. The original plan was to have a cooking activity based on the sport theme, however a last minute change meant that afterwards all ladies who could knit or crochet took a group to teach others their skills. Some learnt basic knitting, whilst others learnt how to crochet flowers!

7. The meeting finished just after 9pm.

Friday 22 June 2012

June meeting pictures

On Thursday 21st June we held our latest WI meeting.

Sport and Fashion

We had a talk by Rosemary Harden. Rosemary is curator at the Fashion Museum in Bath where she has worked for over 20 years. Rosemary has organised a number of exhibitions including Women of Style (2000), John Bates Fashion Designer (2006) and The Diana Dresses (2010).

This year the Fashion Museum have an exhibition on Sport and Fashion and Rosemary described how sports clothing has had a significant impact on the world of women's fashion, for example the link between tennis and the mini skirt, and horse riding and the tailored jacket.

(Credit: Fashion Museum)



For more information and to find out about visiting the Fashion Museum to see the current exhibition along with the incredible archive of garments, please visit the website.

Hooks and needles

We spent the rest of the evening in yarn joy, with experts showing novices how to knit and crochet.  Thanks to everyone who brought along yarn, needles and hooks and a special thank you to the lovely lovely people at Future Publishing for providing us with bundles of yarn, hooks, needles and patterns. They have also provided us with a FromeWI special offer on The Making Spot. Woohoo!





A bit of needle felting with Gilly...




Ladies getting stuck in...



























If you would like to join in more regular knit chat online then please join our Ravelry group. We are thinking of setting up some knit alongs/hook alongs for us to craft together from the comfort of our sofas.

If you are interested in meeting up in person to craft then please get in touch either via Facebook or email and we'll set something up.

Thanks and thanks again!

So as always, thanks to everyone who came along. It's such a lovely way to spend an evening - chatting, learning and eating cake.

Thanks to those who brought drinks and a huge thank you to the ladies who baked cakes. The cake standard is AMAZING and I for one look forward to them every month! I only managed to get 2 pictures as they were all gobbled up really quickly!









Next month

The July meeting will take place on Thursday 19th July and will be vaguely Olympics themed.

Special Offer for Frome WI


As last nights spontaneous knitting and crochet event was such a success the nice people over at The Making Spot have created a special offer just for Frome WI (with the patterns we used included).

From now until midnight Sunday only get any of the patterns on this page FREE with the code FROMEWI There are knitted and crocheted flowers and some beginners and simple patterns for you. www.themakingspot.com/wifrome

You can also download a lot of free patterns including the ones we had last night from Ravelry 

Thursday 21 June 2012

Old skool rules

Jessica Johnson used to work on the WI Life magazine. She now publishes her own blog The Vintage Cake Spot among other things.

Check out these very useful vintage WI cookery tips she has discovered and then visit her blog for more vintage wonder.

"During the research of The Vintage Teatime, that I’ve been only too happy to soak up the chapters on ‘Culinary’ or ‘Cookery’ Hints which were a mainstay of self-published cook books by the WI over the last sixty years. More time-saving ways with potatoes, milk, eggs and pretty much all cupboard staples available to the home-cook in her respective decade. Here’s the best of the bunch…

CABBAGE To prevent cabbage boiling over, add a small piece of dripping or lard. Adds good flavour, too.

CAKE tins. When buying new cake or meat tins, run them inside out with a little lard, then put into a cool oven for an hour or two. This prevents rust and cakes will turn out without sticking.

EGGS you’re doing the separating thing and you drop some shell. Rescue little shards with a large piece of egg shell which acts as a magnet cum lifeguard.

PANCAKES and Yorkshire puds get even tastier with 2ozs of butter thrown into the batter before cooking.

PEARS are much improved by being cooked in a little lemonade rather than water. Think Nigella and her cola ham.

MINT for your summer mojitos can be chopped much more quickly and finely with a pinch or two of sugar in the mix.

ORANGE peel dried and hung up in a paper bag can be used as an excellent flavouring stewed with dried fruit.

REVIVE a drooping lettuce by standing its roots in a little water

THICKENING Put flour in a jar and bake in a slow oven until it just starts to change colour. When cool this can be stored and used for thickening sauces and gravies as it won’t turn lumpy upon adding to hot liquids. What a relief – that’s the white sauce sorted"


(source: the vintage cake spot)