This much anticipated meeting was organised by Janet Barnett, who had also discovered the perfect venue –Café 16 at St Nicholas’s Cathedral, not far from the Central Station. Run by the Oswin Project, it aims to support former offenders by giving them training and employment.
The café is in a beautiful building (with an amazing ceiling!) at the back of the Cathedral. The food was delicious and very reasonably priced. with cakes and quiches from the bakery at HMP Northumberland.
They had reserved a long table for us and were more than happy for us to stay and do our book-swap after we’d eaten our lunch: we were even treated to some live music as the afternoon wore on!
It was wonderful to see people again, talk about bookmaking and other shared crafting interests, and catch up on life post-pandemic.
It was also fabulous to have a live book swap and a chance to handle and examine everyone’s creations at close quarters.
Margaret had also brought us a lucky-dip bag of swaps from her stash and shared with us the amazing ‘Cacophony’ by Ed Hutchins which is even more impressive in real life than it appeared on Zoom!
Of course, Quarto has always been a place where cake is greatly appreciated and so the sharing of Lemon Drizzle, Carrot, Chocolate, Coffee and Rainbow Cakes cake – provided by the last of the Tea and Coffee fund money – made for a fitting finale before for our journeys home!
Our theme for this swap – most appropriately – was ‘Happy’ or ‘Happiness’ and as always there was a wide interpretation of the topic.
Mari H had sent another lovely book from Australia – we were particularly taken with the simple but really effective binding as well as the appropriate sentiment that happiness might be ‘Lunch with Friends’!
Marise took inspiration in the teachings of Buddha and the idea that ‘Happiness is a Choice’:
Janet A used a rainbow of wow-folds to create her two-sided book celebrating an ‘Amazing World’:
Jill’s signature stitched book was an album of ‘People and Things’ which bring her happiness:
Pat’s construction – a collapsed exploding box! – focused on her ‘Happy Places’:
Ruth’s book used hand decorated and calligraphed pages to explore quotes about happiness:
Jo had set herself a challenge to remember that ‘Happiness Lies in Small Things’:
Janet B repurposed a lovely fabric cover and some handmade petal paper to explore the poem ‘Buttercups and Daisies’:
Margaret created collage paper from calligraphy newsletters created for Northumbrian Scribes by the much-missed Susan Moor. She had also raided her postcard collection to create an envelope book with bookmark corners and some secret hiding spaces:
(Apologies for some of the less than brilliant photos taken on the day - I seem to have been in my own light! Thanks to Janet Ashmore for the photos of her book and of us all together.)
We’ve decided that this needs to be an annual event and are hoping to repeat the experience next August in the same venue. It was also decided to continue on Zoom with the Autumn meeting which will be on Saturday 28th October at 10.30. Our theme will be ‘Autumn’ and a Zoom invitation will go out about a week before.
One page of Ruth’s book seemed to really sum up how blessed we are in being part of such an enthusiastic group of creators: we certainly lived up to this mantra on Thursday!
Enjoy the rest of the summer!
