Yesterday 8 of our members went along to the West Yorkshire Federation Annual Meeting in Pudsey and we had a wonderful time.  It's a really good way of finding out what else is happening in the WI.  Each committee chairman told us what their particular committee had been doing and more importantly what was coming up in the future.

But as well as all that we had a PowerPoint presentation by a paramedic from the Yorkshire Air Ambulance in the morning and found out lots of things we didn't know about their wonderful organisation.

The afternoon speaker was Lesley Smith as "Mistress Shakespeare" and she had us in stitches with her tales of life in Shakespeare's times.  She has spoken at the Annual Meeting several times before and she never fails to have us "rolling in the aisles" with her hysterical portrayals of historical characters!

There was also a competition entitled "Seasons - any one will do" when members had been asked to make something demonstrating any craft technique they wanted.  The Judge's 1st choice  was a lovely collection of little dolls with tiny hats portraying Easter/Spring time.  But the Judge's 2nd choice was a small 3D wallhanging portraying Summer  made by a member of Harden WI.  The judging was then thrown open to the members and the Harden entry was the overwhelming winner gaining more than twice as many votes as any of the others.

So it's been a really successful, if somewhat busy, seven days for Harden WI!!

We held our April meeting on Monday and we were delighted to see so many of our members there as well as some visitors.

We had an excellent talk by Patricia Atkinson about East Riddlesden Hall.  It was really interesting and informative and she also told us how some of our everyday sayings came into being.  Unfortunately, at the moment my mind has gone a complete blank  and I can't remember any of them (!!) so I hope  anyone is reading this who was there will add some examples for me in the comments section!!

She left a list of her other talks with us and I am sure we will be inviting her back to talk to us on another subject.

We had another lovely walk around Harden this morning.  There were five of us and we set off as usual at 9.30.  The weather was a bit overcast and the forecast was for rain at lunchtime;   and as promised promptly at 12.00 it started to rain!!  But luckily by that time we had stopped for our coffee at Stephen Smith's Garden Centre and were on our way home!

The next walk will be on Monday 9th May.

We had a record breaking Spring Market both with the weather and the amount raised.  Many thanks to all those who donated things, those who helped on the stalls and all those who came along to spend their money!  The cake stall, as usual, was a tremendous success and the tombola was especially popular with the children!

Have a look at our Photo Gallery on our main website for more pictures.

These first few weeks in April are busy times for our WI. Harden belongs to the Lower Wharfedale Group along with Otley, Pool-in-Wharfedale and Wilsden and last Wednesday, 6th April, was our annual get together.  We take it in turns to host the evening and this year it was Wilsden's turn.  We were entertained by Sue Woodcock who lives in Grassington - some of you may have read  her articles in the Yorkshire Post on Saturdays.  She is a real character and she gave us a fascinating talk about her life;  we were enthralled by all her tales and were very sorry when she had to finish - we could have listened to her all evening.  So a  big thanks to Wilsden for such an enjoyable evening.

There is always a competition between each WI at these meetings, themed on the subject of our speaker and this year's was a real challenge.  We had to knit a blanket made up of 6" squares - 60 in total and hopefully ending up with a blanket 5' x 3'!!  It had to have a countryside theme and be suitable for a child.  We formed a sub committee to design our project and we soon had everyone busy knitting away.  Then we had to sew all the squares together and embellish it with our design and we ended up with this.......................
Sue Woodcock was given the unenviable task of judging the entries and we are very proud to say that Harden was chosen as the winner and we came away with the Tidyman Cup.  You can see photos of the other entries on our website.


And because we all had so much fun getting together to create this blanket we decided to form our craft club and there are more details about this under "Other Activities" on our website.