A new year, and a new start

We held our AGM yesterday, and voted to have our evening meetings once a month in our new home in Abergele.  We will be having a regular full day meeting once a month in our old home in LlanfairTH. as well, so are looking forward to a stable and busy future.
We were delighted to welcome four new members - this must be a record for a single meeting!  Three are complete beginners, which is wonderful, and a sign of the interest in handcrafts nowadays.
Here we and they are, hard at work in our new venue:

Spinning wheel in action

- and spinners in action

The essential component of any meeting (apart from the people and the spinning wheels).

AC

A new venue?

After much searching, we have found a new venue..... back in Abergele as befits our title.  It wasn't easy to find the ideal combination of room size, access, carpark (essential with all that stuff we carry around) and suitable dates.  Despite A Politician's remarks about a broken society, there are an awful lot of community groups around in this part of the country, all busy meeting and doing, and a lot of them do it on our traditional meeting day! 
In the past we met on a Wednesday:  one evening a week, and all the other Wednesday afternoons. Since the Guild was founded in 1985 we have used a variety of meeting places from schools to community halls, not forgetting the hairdressers' training salon at Ysgol Emrys ap Iwan and that Church hall with the hole in the roof! 
In a break with the aforesaid tradition, we will be now be meeting on the fourth Monday evening of each month (unless there are major unforeseen hindrances).  Our new venue is the Hall beside Capel Mynydd Seion in Abergele, on Chapel Street.  I will publish a new link, with a map, shortly. 
Our first meeting is our AGM, so strictly speaking not "public".  However, I hope that we might offer a taster session to potential new members in the second half of the evening.
In the meantime, we are trying to reconstitute our "Summer Tour".  This was a fixture during school holidays, when members invited each other into their homes on Wednesday afternoons.  When we moved our meetings to LlanfairTH we were able to use the Community Centre all year round and so the Summer Tour went into abeyance.  I am very grateful to those members who have volunteered to offer hospitality, particularly as my own house is too small for me to reciprocate!  As the Tour takes place in members' own homes, it is open only to members and their invited guests, and could be on any day of the week:  I will not be publicising it widely on the internet. 
We have had a lot of enquiries from potential new spinners over the summer, so perhaps the Abergele Guild is heading for a new era with a new venue and new members?!
AC

Annual General Meeting, 2010

Tonight we held our AGM in our regular evening meeting slot.  Thanks to all who attended and helped to make it a really good session.  Lots of ideas were considered with lively discussion from all members, long standing and more recent.  (Official minutes to follow, when I get round to typing them up).
We now have a new Chairman/person - welcome to her, and thanks for her moving tribute to her late predecessor, who will be greatly missed.  We also have a new Treasurer and a new Librarian:  good luck to them both!
Just for a change, we had tea and cake......and sausages.  There was a lot of constructive talk, but not much spinning done.  We eventually drifted home into the starry, starry night with the knowledge of an evening well spent, and the next year to look forward to.