2019 is Wiltshire Federation's centenary and one of the planned celebrations is the creation of a centenary banner to depict all the WIs in the Federation this year. Gill and Diane from the Crafty Crew have been busy to ensure Pewsham Belles is included. The square of material provided is quite small, so they decided to keep things simple. Luckily our logo is distinctive and translates easily into a stitched motif along with the year of our formation. Add some bling and voila! our contribution is complete in time to meet Monday's deadline. Look out for the completed banner later in the year.

Our latest Flexi Club meeting was a circular walk around the Monkton Park estate and park today which followed the East Chippenham route, with a couple of variations to make it ours. The two and a half mile walk took us along part of the disused Chippenham to Calne railway track, through Monkton Park following the river, and finished with a new cafe to sample at our meeting/finish point, the Hearty Hare at Chippenham station (thumbs up!). It was a great way to get unstuffed after the Christmas festivities, with great chat and company along the way. Quite a few of us also walked into Chippenham and back again to make the total walk around the 5 mile mark. Look out for more walk and cafe

The first production from our new AmDram group was an absolute corker! Started as a secret project by the Creative Writers, it morphed from the planned murder mystery into an unexpected alternative Cinderella. Fiona Plant put together the outline script, which was then augmented by the other writers and cast. It was a true team effort, with the script constantly changing until the day before the Christmas party, plus costumes and props sourced from within the cast, with some items also made especially for the occasion. Thanks to April Martel who stepped in at the last minute as props and sounds meister (and took the above photo at the dress rehearsal) when the cast realised this task woul

We loved the finale song to our pantomime. Clever Fiona P reworked the words to YMCA for our new anthem, Double You Eye, complete with dance moves! Here are the words, so you can sing along for yourself. Is this our new alternative to Jerusalem? Will we be asked to perform this at the next Wiltshire AM? Only time will tell... Ladies, there's no need to feel down, I said Ladies, pick yourself of the ground, I said Ladies, 'cause you're in a new town There's no need to be unhappy. Ladies, there's a place you can go, I said Ladies, when you're short on your dough, You can go there and I'm sure you will find Many ways to have a good time. Chorus It's fun to be in the Double You Eye It'

We had a fantastic turnout for our latest Flexi Club venture featuring pre-Christmas drinks and mulled wine tasting at Rivo Lounge last night. This looks set to be an annual event! The breakfast at Allington cafe also proved popular earlier in the month. Between the two events, around a third of our members were in attendance at least one of them. Look out for future Flexi Club events planned for between Christmas and early in the New Year!

Last night's Crafty Crew was full of festive cheer due to the fizz donated by Pewsham Belles in thanks for this year's group sessions, hostess Caroline's mulled drinks, and snacks supplied by Crew members. Ginny showed us how to make natural Christmas decorations using dried the citrus slices and cinnamon sticks she'd brought, plus lots of dried bay leaves supplied by Caroline. These added a spicy, citrusy scent to our surroundings whilst we worked. We all agreed this was a suitable activity for a group session. Ginny's top tips for making the Christmas decoration: Cut the slices not too thin (they'll burn) or too thick (they'll take much longer to dry) - a few millimetres is just right La

What a lot we collected! An overflowing table of donations at last week's Christmas party which was duly delivered by the bootful to Doorway this morning. Everyone at Doorway says 'Thank you' and wishes all at Pewsham Belles a very Merry Christmas. Mark (right) one of Doorway's trustees plus a volunteer accept our goodies with huge smiles and thanks. The hidden plight of the rural homeless and the work of Doorway was featured in The Guardian last Friday making our gift even timelier.

A HUGE thanks to everyone who's passed discrete bags of bras to me the past month or so. We've collected 63 bras for Against Breast Cancer's recycling campaign; that's 11 more than last year. I'm surprised as I thought we'd emptied out our underwear drawers pretty thoroughly last time! That's another four and a half kilos of bras making a contribution to Against Breast Cancer's research and their project with African women, instead of them going to landfill. Update: And we did it all again in 2019. We collected 24 bras this time around. Our overall total over 3 years is just 2 shy of 200!

Disaster was neatly avoided at The Flying Monk last night when three gallant gentlemen gave us their quietest seats in the pub, so we didn't need to compete with the din downstairs. It turned out they also were members of a book club and commended us for our seasonal choice - MC Beaton's A Highland Christmas - which was in stark contrast to the tale of slavery and cruelty they'd had to endure for theirs! We agreed it was nice to have a seasonal read but it was a very short, quick book that felt very light on content. This was reflected in our score of 4 out of 10. As usual our lively discussions covered far more than the book in hand. Some of the group also ordered food which was very ta