Feminine issues

16th March
The craft group gathered together to review its members' attempts at hardangar embroidery and as you may imagine, those that were good were very, very good and those that were bad were horrid.Never mind, we know now what we should have been producing. A little chastened, most of us settled down to some knitting. Since our last monthly WI meeting, I am surprised people haven't been aware of the click-clack of knitting needles locally because the members have turned into tricoteuses as in the French Revolution: every idle moment turned into a row or two of garter stitch.We are knitting shawls for the Fistula victims in Ethiopia.We now have a membership of 70 and if every member produced a square we could send out at least half a dozen shawls. So click-clack away! We were also able to plan to visit a new fabric shop in the area and have an outing to a patchwork exhibition in Tingewick.  

11th March
What the media describe as "three parent families" was the subject for debate tonight at the Discussion evening. It is a controversial and important issue at present. Is it right to expect perfect children when this can only be achieved by interrupting the natural process? Are we starting out on the path taken by the Nazi regime which was so heavily criticized? Are we being irresponsible if we know there is a risk of disability to not intervene to correct it? We now accept IVF but the eradication of some faulty DNA by taking healthy genes from a third party is more problematic.The social problems in the future were discussed and the liability of not just the parents but the medical staff involved was questioned.Some of us recalled scary science fiction stories read years ago which don't now seem so unbelievable at all, just a preview of modern day life.  

7th March
This is just a sideline to the usual blog. It was interesting when I was in Birmingham this weekend to see advertised at the Symphony Hall the coming NFWI competition Singing for Joy final. There it was, not in flashing lights but in very large print on the same hoardings as the Katherine Jenkins concert. I look forward to seeing some report in the press and certainly in WI Life. Also in the Circus beside the new Bull Ring, there was one of those huge moving displays across the front of the buildings featuring the Violence against Women campaign. People were standing around commenting on the pictures of battered and bruised women and taking away leaflets about Women's Aid. It was International Women's Day and this was certainly being highly effective in catching everyone's attention.