Fat bottomed girls you make this rockin' world go round

If you follow us on either facebook or twitter, you are probably already aware that our vice president, Sarah Martindale has been selected as a finalist in Miss Plus Size International 2013.

Sarah entered the competition back in November last year. She heard about it on twitter and thought 'why not'. Fast forward to January when she received an email from the pageant organisers inviting her to attend the next stage of the process. She travelled to London on January 26th to meet some of the other few hundred girls and have a nerve-wracking interview with the judges. Fast forward once more to February 12th when the thirty finalists were announced on the Miss Plus Size International website, Sarah was on the list.

The Grand Final of the pageant will be on 23rd November 23rd at The Grand Connaught Rooms in London! As a branch we have supported Sarah from day one in this pageant and it is so important to us that we can go join her in London to support here there too! But here's the thing... it's expensive.

For each of us to travel from Liverpool to the pageant and stay overnight in Central London it's going to cost around £215 per person. We are currently in the process of putting together some fabulous ideas for fundraising over the next few months but in the meantime we are looking to y0u, dear readers, to make donations.   And you can do that here. Our indiegogo page has been set up and at the time of writing has raised £90 towards our total goal of £1000. We would love to raise that goal total on the page. When you donate you're not just helping The Women's Institute - a percentage of the ticket price will also be donated to the pageant's charity partner, MacMillan Cancer Support! Please do consider donating, we are so excited about the prospect of being involved in this pageant supporting healthy body image and body positivity and are desperate to take part down in London! And if you donate £10 or more you can even have your very own knitted lipstick! Don't think you have to donate £10 though, every £1 donated is helpful!

If you can't help financially please share our indiegogo campagain with your friends via facebook, twitter, tumblr, Pinterest, whatever you want! Or you could share Sarah's finalist fan page! Or both! Any and all help you can give will be gratefully received. You can read more about Sarah's journey so far on her blog. Thank you!

The Iron Maidens x

All photos by Emily Holton

Snake Invasion

As I mentioned in my last blog, we recently got involved with The Liverpool Happy Hookers Crochet Group! They were commissioned by Liverpool City Council to yarnbomb Bold Street with knitted and crochet snakes for Chinese New Year! A few of the ladies from our newly-formed wool craft group, Twisted Stitchers took part and installed their snakes on Sunday 10th February.

 

Our snakes joined the ranks of forty others to decorate and brighten up Bold Street in preparation for the Chinese New Year parade! All of the snakes were successfully installed on lampposts and bollards up and down the street on Sunday morning.

By Monday evening, all but ONE of the snakes had vanished! Slithered off to find new warm and dry homes, out of the rain. The Happy Hookers would love to know what happened to them so if you have one, please send them a picture of your new friend! You can contact The Happy Hookers via the twitter account @boldstreetsnake

Happy Sunday!

The Iron Maidens x

2013 is off to a flying start

WOW. We are 21 days into this year and already The Iron Maidens have been running ourselves ragged getting our wonderful new branch up and running! In our January meeting we had the lovely Karen MacFarlane pop along to talk us through the brilliance of yarnbombing. She told us about two upcoming events in Liverpool and we were more than keen to get involved. The first event is Chinese New Year, for which Liverpool City Council have asked local crochet group 'The Happy Hookers' to yarnbomb Bold Street with snakes. The second event is in March for the Threshold Festival and Karen's group The Merseyside Yarnstormers will be transforming the Baltic Triangle area of Liverpool into a woolly wonderland. The Iron Maidens will be assigned our own lamppost as part of Threshold and are working on ideas and patterns as I type this.

Karen's talk definitely got our creative juices flowing and plenty of our members wanted to learn to crochet there and then. Fortunately our lovely Claire was on hand to start an impromptu crochet class.

We also announced our logo competition! As a unique and creative group of women we feel we deserve a unique and creative logo! This logo will be extra special as four of us will be getting it tattooed onto our flesh for all time. The brave/stupid foursome consists of our President, Sami Score; Vice-President, Sarah Martindale; Events Officer, Gaynor Newman and PR Officer, China Lou. For our members I have set up this thread in our forum where you can submit your entries electronically. For those who want to draw them out on paper, you can bring them to our next meeting and give them to me (Sarah).

Since the meeting we have also decided to start our very own knitting and crochet group, yet to be named. The group will meet every other Tuesday at The Marino Lounge in New Brighton at 7:30pm with the first meeting on Tuesday 29th January. These meetings are free for non-members too! So if you'd like the opportunity to come along and meet some of our ladies and get a feel for what we're about you will be very welcome. Then you can attend our next monthly meeting and sign your life over to us! The meeting will be Wednesday 13th February, 7:30pm at Misty Blues on Manor Road in Liscard.

I think that's everything! Happy January!

The Iron Maidens x

Yarnbombing - The Art of Wool Graffitti

 

This week we had a fabulous talk given by Karen Macfarlane about Yarn bombing (or sometimes Yarn storming), a sort of wool based graffiti that is popping up with more and more regularity in urban areas. Yarn bombing can be used in various ways to do various things. Whether it is to highlight a current issue, brighten urban or derelict areas, to advertise and enrich events in the area, or just for the hell of it, it has to be the most decorative form of anarchy ever to have come from the crafting world.