Our Annual Meeting was held on 3 May 2016, with our Middlesex Federation WI Advisor Liz Morrell, Federation Chair. We balanced the business end of the meeting with a fun quiz followed by tea and some of Rosemary’s excellent cakes (my favourite the lemon drizzle!).

In her last address to the Annual Meeting as Secretary, Maggie Weatherby recounted our busy year, from Centenary activities in early summer and our successful Group Meeting in October to fascinating talks by Dame Hilary Blume and pilot Vicky Farmer, a suffragette walk and a night of beautiful pearls.

Liz ably officiated for our elections. We are proud to welcome a new member, Norma Barnes, to our committee: an additional pair of hands is always welcome. Emma Watson was elected President for a second term.

Following the Committee meeting held on 9 May, we are happy to confirm that Committee office bearers for 2016-2017 are: Emma Watson – President, Nina Jewell – Treasurer, and Jayne Fowler – Secretary. Jayne also manages the MCS and membership matters, and this year will be assisted by Rosemary as minute secretary. Rosemary will continue her co-ordination of all things food and drink, whilst Ching will support Nina on financial matters. Maggie was presented wth flowers as a token of thanks from the committee for over five years of hard work as secretary and one of the inaugural Committee members of our WI: thank you Maggie!

 

Philip Wilton and Keith Sides seemed to sweep through CUFOS like a mini Tottenham whirlwind with their selection of artisan cheeses for us to sample. We heard about real milk versus supermarket milk (no prizes for guessing which Wildes uses!), and many of us had flashbacks to school milk when we tasted the unhomogenised milke which goes into Wildes Cheeses. Despite a very entertaining presentation from Philip, we were all eager to try the cheeses. Yum. Loads of flavour and texture made with obvious passion.

At our March 2016 meeting we welcomed Frances Benton of Tears of the Dragon, who beguiled us with a fascinating talk on the history of pearls. I think we all learned so much about this fascinating ‘living jewel’. We then had the opportunity to browse Frances’s huge collection of pearl neck;aces, bracelets and earrings, with almost all attendees treating themsleves or a loved one to a pearly piece.

At The Alexandra WI we love a bit of knitting and stitching. Our Knitting Group has grown to become a lively monthly gathering for our keenest knitters. We have decided to build on the success of this group and combine the Sewing and Knitting Groups and launch the Knitting and Stitching Group. Members and guests are welcome to bring along their own projects, whether knitting, crochet or any variety of hand sewing… or join is with one of our charity craft projects!

Meeting details are the same as previously: each third Tuesday of the month in the Waiting Room at CUFOS, from 8pm until 10pm. There is a nominal charge of £1 for members and £3 for non-members.

A reminder we’re meeting 8pm Tuesday 5 Jan in the Victoria Stakes pub at the corner of Priory Rd, Park Rd and Muswell Hill. Come and say hi, have a drink and find out our plans for the year ahead!

Our annual Christmas meeting: this year we asked members to bring along something which meant ‘Christmas ‘to them. Everyone presented what they had brought, then we adjourned for mulled wine and mince pices, before learning from committee member Ching how to make lovely little boxes from old greeting cards (what a clever idea!).

We were joined on 3 November 2015 by Denise Dobson, leader of Crouch End’s local Songworks choir, for an evening of wonderful singing.

Denise employs a ‘Natural Voice’ approach, which means about celebrating the voice you were born with, rather than trying to train it to an ideal of perfection. It’s about building accepting, non-judgmental communities that sing together. It’s about welcoming all voices into a group without audition and working from there to make a group sound. It’s about making learning by ear accessible to the whole group so that nobody needs to be able to read music.
Even our members who were a little nervous about singing in front of others found Denise’s relaxed approach gave them the confidence to join in an just ‘go with the flow’. We made some wonderful sounds, including songs from Nepal, Cameroon and South Africa, plus the Suffragettes’  album The March of the Women.

Over 50 women – WI members from the North-East London Group Meeting (Clay Hill, Grange Park Evening, Harringay and Tottenham (Hatters), Stoke Newington, Stroud Green and The Alexandra) and guests – met at CUFOS in Muswell Hill to celebrate the fifth birthday of The Alexandra WI and the Centenary of the WI and to share in the fellowship offered by the annual Group Meeting facilitated by the Federation. A fabulous evening was had by all!

 

For Twitter users out there (or just the Twitter-curious!), The Alexandra WI is tweeting from the Women Of The WI account all this week.

Women of the WI is a social media project, created to celebrate the centenary of the Women’s Institute in 2015 by showcasing as many different women who are involved in the WI and the fantastic things that they do, not only as part of their own groups but also in their day to day lives.

We’re looking forward to it!

https://twitter.com/WomenoftheWI

Please take a look, reply, re-tweet… join the conversation!

You can also read about the project here: Women of the WI website …and find out why we’re involved this fun project all about communication!

 

Our September meeting was all about flying, with guest speaker Vicky Farmer of Flyers Flying School at Elstree (about 30 minutes’ drive from Muswell Hill) tell us about her career in aviation, from early days co-ordinating parenthood with working as a commercial pilot to running her own flying school. We all found Vicky a highly inspirational speaker who kept us etertained and answered those burning questions we had about the business of flying.

Middlesex Federation has requested that all its WIs make a 2 inch square embroidery, which represents their WI. The squares will be sewn together and hung in the Middlesex room in Denman College.

Our Sewing group maestro Helen tells how she created our square:

“Although small, the one I did took many hours. Denman sent the Aida fabric and gave a free hand as to design and stitches. I chose Alexandra Palace to represent us.

First I printed off a photo of Alexandra Palace. Then I used graph paper to do a design having measured the fabric and counted the squares within the overall size of the finished piece. Each square represents a possible stitch. Using another piece of Aida fabric I outlined the piece in stitches and did a test embroidery playing around with the design, stitches and colours.

When I was happy with the test piece, I used the given fabric to do the final embroidery.”

Great work, Helen! We now look forward to seeing the whole hanging!

It’s holiday season and hence a relatively small group met on 4 August. During the usual WI Business, Maggie once again prompted everyone to start thinking about resolutions, and we had a fruitful discussion on the merits of the three suggestions put forward. We will be looking to devote a future meeting to resolutions so we can really start getting involved.

We then enjoyed a glass of wine and some cake (thanks Ching!) before breaking into two teams to run through a fun quiz. Lots of discussion about what we knew and didn’t know about WI history. Not a great deal of crafting done, but we like to keep August pretty flexible, and I hope all who attended enjoyed themselves. If anyone would like to make a padded heart decoration at home, let us know and you can take a kit and get going.

Our July 2015 meeting was a sweet one, with Jemma Regis of Jemz Cake Box demonstrating the fine art of sugar craft cake decorating. Jemma started out by showing how to create a sugar paste and fondant teddy bear in a colour of our choice, then moved on to flower making, showing us how simple painted flowers can transform a basic used cake into something very special.

A fun and very successful day was had by all at the Fair In The Square in Highgate. Pictured are Rosemary, Jayne, June and Nina showing off some wonderful home-made goods: jams, marmalades, knitted goods, wonderful hand-made bags (thank you Jude!) and even plants (thank you Maggie!). Great work everyone!

We were proud to have had Dame Hilary Blume as our guest speaker at our June 2015 meeting. Dame Hilary spoke of her charity work and specifically, her work in establishing Knit For Peace, which brings together knitters from around the world. We all agreed Dame Hilary’s talk was most inspirational.

As the WI Centenary Baton passed through Alexandra Palace, The Alexandra WI was there with colleagues from the Middlesex Federation. Here are Ching, Maggie and Rosemary with the baton on a sunny day at our beloved Ally Pally.

Pictured left to right are Liz Morrell, Chair of the Middlesex Federation, Ching Smith committee member of The Alexandra WI, Audrey Eva, membership secretary of the Clay Hill WI, Heather Hall, Treasurer of Clay Hill WI, with Maggie Weatherby, Secretary of The Alexandra WI. (Picture courtesy Ham and High).

On Monday 18 May 2015 Committee member Rosemary was one of many WI members on board a Mississippi style riverboat at Walton Bridge, Walton-on-Thames, for the handover of the WI Centenary Baton from Middlesex Federation to Surrey Federation. Lovely photo, Rosemary – great to have been a part of this historic journey!

Our 2015 Annual Meeting was held on 5 May. First up on the agenda were the AGM formalities, including election of the Committee and President for 2015-16. Re-elected to the committee were Laura Dauny, Jayne Fowler, Rosemary Pettman, Emma Watson and Maggie Weatherby. We warmly welcome new committee members Nina Jewell and Ching Smith, and thank outgoing committee members Helen Parkinson and Charli Payne for their contributions. Thank you also to our Middlesex Federation reps for overseeing our AGM proceedings. Emma Watson was elected third President of The Alexandra WI.

Convenor of the Sewing Group, Helen Parkinson reminded everyone of the work of Project Linus, a charity which donates hand-made quilts to sick and vulnerable children and young people. Thank you Helen for introducing Project Linus to our WI, and for organising for the quilts made by the Knitting and Sewing group members to be on display at the AGM.

Then for the fun: our first games night! Much fun was had by all. Let us know if you’d like to do this again, or maybe an outing to a board games café could be an idea?

For those you who couldn’t make October’s meeting, we saw the culmination of our very first photography competition. Local photographer for the Ham & High, and judge extraordinaire, Polly came to assess and deliberate on the entries and she was very impressed at the quality of the photos!

Congratulations to all our winners:

• People: Ching Smith
• Places: Emma Watson
• Flora & Fauna: Laura Dauny
• ‘Summer’: Kate Spicer
• Overall best photograph: Emma Watson

Thank you to everyone who entered; it was a great fun evening and maybe the first step in us producing our very own WI calendar!