World Wide Knit in Public Day June 2017

Here we are at our 3rd WWKIP Day held once again in Yarns Coffee Halt at Theatre at The Mill, Mossley.  We held our WWKIP Day a week earlier than the official date because of holidays etc. among the group.  We had our WWKIP Day on Saturday 3rd June.

Our local Hookery Group were joined by some lovely ladies from
the Knitwits Group in Portstewart who went on to host their own WWKIP Day on Saturday 10th June on Portstewart Promenade. Thank you ladies for your support.   Maybe next year we'll travel
to the North Coast and join you for The WWKIP Day.

We also had some friends from Whitehead who joined us again this year. Thank you ladies. 

The staff at Yarns were very attentive as usual and thanks must go to the Duty Manager and to Heather in the coffee shop.  We had 36 folks who came along - women, men, adults and children, some who could knit and crochet and others who couldn't, some who were coming back for a second time and some who were new.

On the table in the photo above you can see some white pieces of work.  It was quite difficult to get a good picture of the white work.  One belongs to Catherine's great grandmother and was crocheted back in the late 1800s.  Catherine's grandmother worked in the local linen mills and she then attached the crocheted pieces to some linen.  The work is so detailed and one can't even begin to imagine the poor light that the ladies had to do the work and also the material is so white and clean.  Another couple of pieces belong to Helena's sister-in-law who crocheted collars and cuffs for Irish dancing tunics.  All of these pieces of work have Irish roses and shamrocks on them.

We decided on a floral theme this year and everyone pulled out all the stops to come up with unusual ideas for crocheted and knitted garments and other items on the theme of flowers.  The photos don't do justice to the work.

Ladder kindly loaned by Mags and the flowers and vines kindly donated by Judith, Niqi's mum.  Judith was tasked with crocheting 'just a few' while she was over on holidays a few weeks ago. 

  Doesn't Ermintrude look well?  This is one of the cows placed in public places around Northern Ireland.  This one is in The Civic Square at Mossley Mill.  Ermintrude's head was carefully measured to ensure a snug fit of her sun hat!

It was a warm day so Ermintrude didn't really need her blanket but there were a few very heavy showers of rain!

'THE Bernard' as it has become known was ceremoniously cast off on WWKLIP Day.  It had been cast on at last year's WWKIP Day.  

This is a very special little flower.  Maureen was teaching herself how to do this pattern when news came through about the Manchester Arena explosion.  After she had finished the flower Maureen decided to put a single pink button onto the flower to represent each of the 22 lives lost.  

 Some other flowers seen on the day.

On trend cacti ....  Have you noticed them everywhere in the shops, in flower shops, on clothes and in the home decor magazines?  Can you see the dinky red watering can tucked away in the background?  

Here's a cheeky little cacti man made by Chloe ....  And a bouquet of carnations made by me.

 The group are making a friendship blanket.  We have all made flowers according to a pattern from Crochet Now but have chosen our own two-tone colours.  Catherine has started joining them together and some of the rest of us will do some more of this.  It is our intention to raffle it off once completed.

 Meet the members of Hookery Group.  Elaine started to crochet in February and this is her first piece.  It's a labour-of-love blanket for her husband.  The Mayor came to pay us a visit too that day on one of his last official visits at the end of his term of office.

 Evelyn's smiley little happy flower, from an Attic24 pattern, resting against Niqi's Sunshine and Showers blanket.

Maureen's sunshine flower.

 We were lucky enough to have one of our Poppy Pieces on display for our WWKIP Day.  It generated lots of discussion from members of the public who were also using the coffee shop that day.

And so to rest ...

A brief moment somewhere else

 I have to say that it is becoming quite difficult to blog about Hookery because of a Most Special Project that we have just finished and that will be officially, and I mean most officially, unveiled next week! We are sworn to secrecy until then by Heather Boss.

 So, in the meantime, imagine some pleasant music like the stuff they played while we watched the Gallery on that art programme with Morph. We were at my house last week. Catherine, among the many other quite wondrous things she is making for the lucky children in her sphere, is working on the Hungry Caterpillar.

 If I could find the wool I would be fixing the holes that are lamentably appearing in the blanket I made for my mother's birthday a mere year and a half ago. Moving swiftly on...

...to a word on frogging. Catherine is here frogging a cardigan with which she is not entirely pleased. Niqi, however, is working on a beauty of a shawl, a covetable piece, for which she hasn't had quite enough wool, and so has frogged other less precious things to finish. Sometimes the end result is worth the wait- and the wait will soon be over!

Hookery meets cookery

Ever interested in widening our horizons, four of us native Hook-its tried our skills at cup cake decorating and became Cook-its for an evening.  We had an absolutely fantastic night starting off with a cup of tea or coffee and a chat.  Many thanks go to Jennie and her mum Laura for their witty demonstrations, guidance and endless patience.

Guess who two of the major players were ....

Apologies that the above picture is sideways, but not being of technical mind I cannot rotate it ....  This was us practising our piping and writing skills on parchment laid out on a tressle table.

Picture rotated (P.)

At the end of the evening we all had to put what we thought of as our best personal effort onto a table and two winners, a winner for technique and what was thought of by the experts as the best design, were chosen.

Queen Niqi won the prize for technical accomplishment and her winning creation is the bottom right cupcake in the following photograph.  The lady who won for artistic creativity iced the basket-type cupcake with lemon and violet pansies at the very bottom of the photo above.

I was adventurous and attempted to write on the buttercream icing but being from a family with long names I was encouraged to shorten them ....

 

And how gorgeous those cupcakes were with a cup of tea for supper .....  Mmmm nice.

Hostess Hookits

Now you all know how we Hookits just loooove our food and sweet treats - you may have seen just a few small photos of us with food!

1st Jordanstown Brownies meet in the same halls complex as us on Wednesday evenings in St Patrick's. Well, a few weeks ago we were asked by Brown Owl to be testers for the Brownies' Hostess Badge.  Now you can imagine just how excited and delighted we all were about that - lovely savouries and sweet treats with lashings of tea.  How could we possibly refuse?  We decided to don our frocks and pearls for the occasion and make a special effort to match that made by the girls when preparing for their presentations.

In honour of the occasion, perhaps in an attempt to summon real ones, Mags prepared some crochet cupcakes especially for the evening as a thank you to the Brownies she was testing.

Each Brownie had to decide on and then write out their menu, prepare the food and then serve it with tea on a tray which also had to have a decoration on it.  And here we have a photograph of each Brownie's tray.  There were 24 girls ranging from age 7 to 10. Following the repast each girl had to 'entertain' us for a few minutes; we had Irish Dancing, clarinet, violin, keyboard, tin whistle, recorder & poetry recitals, singing with signing, holiday reminiscences, riddle and joke telling - what an accomplished bunch!

And didn't they do well?  Congratulations girls.  We're looking forward to the same treat next year ......