Done!

I’m pleased to say that the exhibition came together in super quick time.

Around 4.30pm on Monday afternoon, we heaved a sigh of relief and looked around.  With a couple of tweaks, it would be complete.

I hadn’t realised that there was no photograph to accompany one little vignette, so returned on Tuesday morning with it and a couple of other small pieces to fill the spaces.  I especially like this small corner, with the hat, the photo of ladies in fur coats outside the Palace (or is it the Houses of Parliament?) and the cover of the Members Guide to the WI, featuring a smartly dressed woman in heels and seamed stockings.  By pure chance, the quote from Pat Jacob above asks “If our daughters won’t join, why not?  Are we old fashioned?”

The next case is quite a contrast, containing more contemporary articles including, quite by chance, my own WI’s tablecloth created for the Tomorrow’s Heirlooms competition.  When Marion and I were looking around for a modern tablecloth for this case last week, we realised we’d not really done anything about requesting one at all.  Oh dear…   As we glanced around the office, my eyes fell on a familiar bundle of fabric in the corner.  One forgetful WI had neglected to collect their tablecloth after the competition and there it remained, on the table until now!!  How pleased I am that we had forgotten, because it was exactly what was needed to complete the 21st century case!

I’m pretty pleased with those vinyl letters by the way.  Though they weren’t easy to apply to the glass, the effort was well worthwhile, don’t you agree?

The light makes photography virtually impossible in there though, and the reflections are tricky to manage.  The museum staff are putting together a window display however and as soon as they are finished with that, the window will be closed up and the reflections will be gone. 

But so will I!  I’m leaving all of those finishing touches to Marion as we swan off on our travels again tomorrow.  On Friday evening, there’ll be a launch party and then on Saturday, the exhibition opens to the public until the beginning of November.

If I have a favourite corner, it’s probably this small arrangement featuring Grace Hadow.  Her portrait usually hangs above the hearth in the committee room of WI House and I have sat beneath it on many occasion and hoped for her guidance!  She was a remarkable woman and Gloucestershire are proud to call her their own, for she was born and grew up in a village just the other side of Cirencester, where she founded one of the very first WIs in 1916.  The minutes of that first meeting are displayed beneath her portrait and as I read them, I wonder if she had any idea of what she was starting?

waste not want not

My mind is currently focused on an exhibition I’m setting up next week.  Marion, the Gloucestershire Federation WI archivist and I have been gathering together some treasures and for the next four months, the main exhibition at the Gloucester Folk Museum will be “100 Years of the WI: A Centenary Celebration”

We spent last week making a few final decisions about what to include and what to leave out and I came home with a list of information tickets to print out.  Yesterday was spent getting those done, mounting them on foamcore board and trimming to size.

Working with A4 card and large A1 sheets of board is satisfying because it all fits so neatly together and there’s hardly any waste.  Even so, I was sorely tempted to keep some of those larger trimmings – at least an inch and a half wide – because “they might come in useful”.

I resisted.

There will be several glass exhibition cases in the museum for us to dress and thinking about how to label them with our themes, I hit upon the idea of cutting vinyl lettering to apply to the glass.  This is the kind of thing my Silhouette machine does beautifully, so I placed an order for a couple of rolls of vinyl and did a trial run.

The glass door from our studio through to the laundry is the test area and a couple of issues were immediately apparent as I applied the phrases.

The first run, I used the Silhouette feature of “nesting”.  That means the program takes whatever shapes or letters from a selection and arranges them in as economical a way as possible.  For someone like me, who hates waste of any material, this is heaven and I found it immensely satisfying to watch as the 40 inch long phrase was squidged into a space no more than 12 inches square.

Applying the single letters accurately wasn’t easy, though.  The whole phrase took time and even though I thought I’d got it right, when I looked again, some letters weren’t quite right.

The idea of spending an age fiddling with each letter whilst setting up on Monday was troubling me.  Maybe I could delegate that one?  My hero immediately put his 2p in and made it clear that though he was ok about fetching and carrying, he wasn’t going to be happy doing anything like that.

So I cut it again, this time maintaining the computer spacing by transferring the letters to the glass using masking tape in exactly the same way as I did here.

Spot the difference?  My hero and I decided that, if a truly professional finish is needed (and it is) then this was the way to go.

Except that there was so much wasted vinyl.  I know I’d bought ten metres, but one of those phrases was 40 inches long! 

I juggled the options.  What about adjusting the character spacing?  How about leaving out the spaces?  Arranging the phrases so I could get three of them across rather than two, thereby avoiding the large space in the middle?

I couldn’t resist making the comparison.  Cutting it out in whole phrases was just so wasteful.  Nesting was surely the way to go.

Thankfully, my hero talks sense at times like this and occasionally (!) I listen.  What would I do with the remaining vinyl anyway?  Hadn’t I bought two rolls of the stuff for this express purpose?  Just get on and do it.

So I did.  All window vinyls are now cut and ready to go and of course, that was absolutely the right thing to do. 

Mind you, the plumber who just arrived to repair our bathroom radiator did look a little askance at the door with a very strange sign on it!  Perhaps she thought we run a nursery in our laundry?

If you happen to be in Gloucester between now and November, I hope you’ll stop by the Folk Museum in Westgate Street and take a look at the exhibition?  It will tell a fascinating story and will include some newly discovered archive material which I’ve been bursting to share ever since Marion first showed it to me! 

A beautiful day

I met three friends in Oxford yesterday.  A few weeks ago, one of them found that she had a rare opportunity to have a day out and wondered if any of us were around to join her for a bit of culture. 

As if we’d let that one go?

Actually, as FB friends will already know, we did spend rather longer in the cafe than we did with the artworks, but hey, we had a few things to talk about!

It’s always fun to visit an exhibition with like minded and very knowledgeable friends, though.  No photos in there so the exhibition poster will have to do.

We returned to the cafe for lunch and chatted the afternoon away before making our way home.

Oxford was pretty full with students and tourists alike.  Not all of them appeared to be having as much fun as we did though.

I love my job

Even if it takes me out of the house at some evil hour on a Sunday morning.  Because, at that time of the day, it takes me no time at all to reach my destination so I can spare a few minutes to sit and enjoy the view from the Common.

It was a beautiful morning after a pretty horrible, wet yesterday, so I was especially appreciative of the blue sky and sunshine.  I’ll bet the cows were, too.

I don’t normally work on a Sunday.  In fact, I think this was a first, but I was happy to agree to visit a rare weekend-long class which was taking place only a stone’s throw away from me.

Though I will admit, it didn’t seem quite such a good idea when my hero nudged me awake at 7.15am.

The venue where the class was taking place was new to me, too.  Strange how, one can live in an area for years and years and yet still find a new place down a hitherto unexplored road.

I sat for a few minutes reflecting on the lovely landscape in which we live.  Sure, it rained all day yesterday, but without that rain, I wouldn’t be looking at such a green and pleasant land, would I?

I spent some time reading a little about the wildlife in the area too, thanks to a thoughtful Parish Council who’d taken the time to create an information board for people like me.

Once inside, I found other interesting things to see as well, including some glorious photographs from the village archive.  Sadly, they don’t photograph well on a bright, sunny morning, but you get the idea – lots of lovely memories of happy days.

I expect, like me, visitors to the hall love to take a closer look at them and pick out the faces, imagining how much life in a Cotswold village has changed over the years.  But of course, I had work to do and a fascinating class to observe.

As usual, I left eager to learn more about the subject, too.

Days like these

Whilst working in Gloucester yesterday, I parked my car by these huge, juicy elderflowers.  I knew that those in our garden were coming into flower and that we needed to swing into action if we intended to make the 2015 vintage elderflower cordial a good one.

So, this morning, my hero and I gathered the first heads ready to begin.

Making elderflower cordial is one of those memory prompts in our family and today was no different.  So yes, a tear was shed as we wandered back across the garden and remembered happy days like these.

Occasionally someone will ask why I keep my blog.  I usually offer the same answer: I keep it for myself, to remember both the special times and the ordinary days so that I can revisit them whenever I like.  On days like these, it’s especially good to look back, to remember and to observe the rhythm of our lives.  At some point in June every year, I’ll write an elderflower cordial post and in spite of all the associations with that process, it’s actually rather therapeutic. 

Almost as therapeutic as actually getting on with it!!