International Women's Day - 8th March

Bake Natter and Roll WI have been hard at work organising a special event for the local community to come together and celebrate International Women's Day! Have you seen any of our purple flyers displayed around town?

2018 marks 100 years since the suffragist campaign resulted in partial votes for women. It was against the background of this campaign that the WI was first formed in 1915. Here at Bake Natter and Roll HQ we thought that International Women's Day was a great opportunity to celebrate how far we've come, and after making enquiries were so excited to learn that a speaker from the Houses of Parliament would be able to join us to give a presentation about the history of votes for women!

The theme of International Women's Day 2018 is Press for Progress, so it's also the ideal time for us to reflect on how far we still have to go in the battle for equality. Our second speakers will certainly get us thinking about that with their presentation about their efforts to support Ramana's Garden Children's Home in India, who rescue vulnerable women and children at risk from trafficking and provide them with a home and education.

As well as our speakers, there will be refreshments on sale, and members of various local women's groups on hand to chat to and find out more about what they do. We've also had some great prizes donated for the raffle by our members and various local businesses, thank you so much to everyone who's supported us. All profits raised from the event will be donated to HomeStart Waverley, our chosen charity for 2018.

We hope lots of people will join us for a fun evening on Thursday 8th March! Entry costs £3 and tickets can be reserved by emailing farnhamwi@gmail.com

Turning the town green to #sharethelove!

We've been thinking about the lives and places we love and want to protect from climate change. The Women's Institute is part of the Climate Coalition, along with other organisations like the National Trust, RSPB and Oxfam. On the 14th February each year thousands of WI members across the country create and share green hearts to show the love and get people thinking and talking about what we stand to lose to climate change and want to protect. We were a couple of days late, but Bake Natter and Roll wanted to join in!

A lovely postcard was sent out in this months WI Life magazine, and on the NFWI website we found instructions how to make green seeded paper hearts from recycled paper (we used old newspapers). A couple of us got together during half-term to make them with our children and had a great time blending up wet newspaper and adding food colouring and seeds. We chose flowers which attract bees and butterflies.

One of our completed postcards with recycled paper heart filled with seeds

At our monthly meeting on 15th February members wrote on the back of the postcard some of the people, places and life they wanted to protect from climate change - these included polar bears, turtles, garden birds, the rainforest, bees and butterflies. Altogether we filled in 25 postcards, including some home-made ones, and attached a seeded paper heart to each one.

And then came the fun part! We hid the postcards in popular places round the town so people could find them. Harder than you might think with the weather we've had recently as they needed to be protected from the elements. On the back of the postcard we'd added contact details so people who found them could contact us via social media and find this blog.

Only a few hours later our first postcard had been found! Staff at Alice Holt Forest were delighted by their discovery and tagged us on their Facebook Page. We left several postcards at the visitor centre and café at this very popular local Forestry Commission woodland.

"What a great find by our colleagues yesterday - some #showthelove seeds! The hearts we found were made by Bake, Natter and Roll - Farnham WI to show the love for marine life affected by plastic pollution. We're really looking forward to planting and nurturing our seeds. How do you show your love for the forest at Alice Holt?"

We're so excited some of our postcards have been found! There are still more to be claimed though, at places including a local Children's Centre, Farnham Library, Farnham Museum and the Maltings.

Comment below if you find one, or to let us know what you'd like to protect from climate change!

Curry Night

Last night saw another successful outing for the Bake Natter and Roll bi-monthly curry night!

Every other month we get together to try different local Indian restaurants, organised by members Gail and Jillian. We've enjoyed some great food, great company and quite a few bottles of wine!

Meeting up socially in smaller groups like these is such an important way to build the community of our WI - the monthly meeting passes so quickly, there can be different faces each time and not always a lot of time to mingle, so joining sub-groups or going on outings is the best way to get to know other members better.

We also have a newly launched Book Group, who have their first meeting in March, so we'll keep you posted about what we're reading!

Our January Meeting

When we planned the Bake Natter and Roll programme for 2018 we thought that January would be the perfect time to think about patchwork quilts - what better time than a dark, chilly evening to appreciate a warm, handmade quilt? And our first WI meeting of the year did not disappoint as our speaker Brigitte Gillespie showed us her beautiful patchwork quilts and conjured up images of cosy evenings snuggled up on the sofa, as well as impressed us with how intricate the designs were.

The hall looked lovely decorated with gorgeous quilts! Brigitte was interesting and funny, and answered lots of questions from members.

Inspired by this display we're planning a possible project and hope to get lots of members involved in creating a Bake Natter and Roll patchwork quilt which we can use as a WI tablecloth for our monthly meetings!

It was also our 2nd birthday! We celebrated with a yummy cake made by our President Cat.

Treasurer Miriam was kept busy receiving subs, and lots of members signed up for upcoming events.

At the end of the evening we considered the 5 resolutions shortlisted for consideration as national WI campaigns and each selected the one we would most like to see go forward.

It was a lovely start to our 2018 meetings, and now we're looking forward to trying some creative writing next month!

Meet the Committee!

Our fantastic Secretary and founder committee member Rachel Wheeler has sadly decided to stand down from the committee after 2 years hard work on all our behalf. We're so sorry to see her go, but are glad she'll have the chance to have a well-earned break and enjoy just being a member of Bake Natter and Roll.

So it seems apt to start introducing the new committee members with our new Secretary, Jeanie Wharrier. Jeanie joined the committee at our AGM this November.

Why did you join Bake Natter and Roll?

To make friends doing activities in the local area.

What's your favourite cake?

Sponge cake.

Tell us 3 facts about yourself?

Mad about dogs.

Love travelling.

Happy in the middle of a forest.

If you haven't already then I'm sure you'll have a chance to meet Jeanie at a meeting soon!

A trip down memory lane

Last week we held our second AGM, so this seems an apt time for a trip down memory lane and a recap of what we've been up to over the last year.

What a year it's been! We've crafted, learnt to make curry and run round town on a murder mystery trail. Members visited the V&A, curry night was launched and we held a sewing workshop. We've met therapy dogs, been thoroughly quizzed about local and WI knowledge and learnt first aid. We had a busy tea and cake stall at Music in the Meadows, had massages at our wellbeing evening and learnt to hula hoop. New information boards have been introduced at the monthly meeting, with details of upcoming events, WI campaigns and all the BNR news. We also have a sales table each month, with lots of lovely items handmade by members, and a popular book exchange raising money for Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice.

Over the last year we've welcomed 21 new members and seen a lot of change within the BNR Committee. It's exciting that we now have 4 new volunteers bringing fresh ideas to the committee, and we look forward to introducing them properly to you over the next few weeks. The full committee is now as follows:
Cat Hoare           President
Jeanie Wharrier  Secretary
Miriam Forster   Treasurer
Mandy Dineley  Programme Secretary
Carole Whatnall Publicity
Beverley Teague
Linda Gregory
Ciarran Minns

Our 2018 programme is almost finalised and we look forward to sharing it with you very soon!

Coming soon!

Firstly, apologies from Bake Natter and Roll HQ for how quiet the blog has been this year. Life has somewhat got in the way and priorities have been focused on running the WI rather than blogging about it! As we approach our second Annual Meeting on the 16th of this month we have new committee members and hopefully we'll have the resources to keep the updates more frequent.

So, watch this space! Over the next couple of months we'll have news about changes to the committee, a review of what we've been up to over the last year and (most excitingly!) be publishing our 2018 programme.