Recycling in Old Buckenham

Recent Women's Institute meeting
Old Buckenham Women’s Institute are keen on recycling and many members are skilled needlewomen so the talk by Julie Porter on 'Recycling with a Difference' at the June meeting went down well. This inspiring young woman has set up a business turning old fabrics into useful and beautiful items. She makes bags from, would you believe, supermarket plastic bags, jeans, t-shirts and tights. Julie demonstrated how she cuts and stretches these items to create narrow lengths which she then knits or crochets to make the bags using various 'found' oddments to decorate them. She also makes skirts and dresses from men's ties and hats from a variety of fabrics including waterproof ones from umbrellas.
At the start of the meeting there was a minutes silence in remembrance of three members who had recently died.
Christine Potter from Bunwell and Carleton Rode WI (who represented Old Buckenham at the National Federation of WIs Annual Meeting in Bournmouth) gave an interesting report on her visit. Among the 9,000 attendees the Norfolk Federation was well represented and Christine encouraged members to go to one of these meetings if the opportunity arose. At this meeting the two resolutions selected by all WI members were debated and voted on. The vote for tackling the decline in rural bus services gained 96% in favour and encouraging more women to take up cervical screening gained 97% in favour. One main speaker at the meeting was Lord Bradley, chair of the Care not Custody coalition and trustee of the Prison reform Trust, on diverting mental health cases away from the prison system. He praised the WI for their tireless work for this cause. The second speaker was Maggie Philbin, OBE, once a TV presenter and now an ambassador for encouraging and improving science and technology in schools and founder of TeenTech to help young people get involved with science and engineering with an emphasis on supporting girls to pursue science.
Members were encouraged to knit scarves for St Martin's Housing Trust. These scarves will be made into a 'house' to be displayed in Norwich Cathedral from Monday 7 to Monday 14 October after which they will be sold to raise funds for the charity.