THREE TALENTED LADIES IMPRESS THE WOMEN’S GROUP
On Wednesday 4th April three of our talented members impressed the group by demonstrating their skills and talents.
The evening began with Ruth Cable giving us a demonstration of how to successfully make her legendary meringues and showed us how to reach the correct consistency of whisked egg whites before adding castor sugar and then how to arrange the mixture on trays before baking. Obviously as there is no oven (yet!) in the Parish Room, as a true professional she had brought along enough meringues for the group to enjoy that she had made earlier and all that was left for her to do was to whip up some cream to complete them. Ruth always makes meringues for our Christmas party and they are always very popular. She then told us how to make ice cream with the remaining egg yolks and we were able to sample both lemon and coffee flavoured versions.
After enjoying the meringues with our tea and coffee Beryl Malcolm showed us many examples of lace making including some work in progress and she had prepared a lace pillow with bobbins, pins, thread and a pattern to show us how to proceed. I know that I speak for the group when I say that we all felt really in awe of her work. Apparently at the Crooked Spire Christmas Tree festival each year Beryl and her lace making colleagues make tree decorations for that event and she had brought along some examples of these to show to us.
Our final talented lady was Christine Wieloch who is a skilled patchwork seamstress. She began by saying how she first became interested in the craft when wanting to make a cot quilt for an expected grandchild and this led to her going to quilting classes. She showed us several examples of different patterns and types of quilting and we were all particularly impressed by the large quilts that she had brought along to show us.
Afterwards no one was in a hurry to go home and we were all able to have a closer look at both the lace and the quilting and to ask the “experts” lots of questions.
Ruth, Beryl and Christine had obviously spent a lot of time preparing for the meeting and I know that I speak for all the members when I say a very big “Thank you” to them all for providing us with such an interesting, informative and enjoyable evening.
Our next meeting is on Wednesday 2nd May in the Parish Room at 7.00pm when Sheena Field from the Christian charity The Medaille Trust will talk about support for victims of slavery and trafficking. All ladies are welcome to join us.
Jean Lee (Secretary)