Kerikeri Guild had an amazingly busy year in 2004.  We celebrated our 20th birthday, with a party at the Kerikeri Cruising Club in April.  It was a wonderful event, with representatives from other Guilds, as well as a number of past presidents, joining us.

Nina Richmond, one of our founding members was awarded a Life Membership.

August 15 was another memorable day.  After around two years work, our Guild presented a cross stitch wall hanging to Hospice Bay of Islands. 

The original painting, 'One day in Kerikeri II', was donated to the Guild by local artist Judi Soutar.  It was then converted to counted cross stitch, and 22 of our members stitched the 25 panels which made up the piece. 

After the stitching was finished, Joyce Button, Val Cook, Jan Flowers and Alison James assembled and laced the pieces, and Jean Leigh made a wonderful job of the machine assembly. 

The fabric used was a 32 count Murano, and the original chart required 56 A4 sized sheets of paper, which were painstakingly taped together, then cut apart into the appropriate sections, and handed out to our members. 

Lacing the piece took around nine hours (give or take a cup of tea or two!)  The embroidery was hung in the Kerikeri Library for one month, before moving to its new home in the Hospice.

In May, Jean Leigh asked if any of our members would be interested in learning machine embroidery.  They agreed to meet Saturday mornings. This lasted only one week, thereafter this enthusiastic group met every Saturday, 9am - 3.30pm , right through to October. Jean reports that details such as morning tea and lunch didn't interest them, they didn't want to stop.   I am sure that more than one of them had dreadful withdrawal symptoms after the classes ended for the year, and it will certainly be part of our Guild year again this year.

During the year we also had workshops on Hardanger, traditional shadow work, beading, candlewicking, crazy patchwork, Christmas lozenges and needle rolls.

Our enthusiastic members, donated so generously to our 'in house' raffles during the year, and their wonderful support of these raffles alleviated the need for a Christmas fund raiser, which certainly made the weeks leading up to our Christmas luncheon very easy on the committee, which normally has to work hard raising funds for the next year.

Our membership numbers swelled so much that we now have had a change of venue to the Red Cross Rooms and we continue to meet twice weekly.

Lyn Manning