Even more poppies - now 2,682 collected!

Another exciting time as I collected 150 poppies from an older woman today which she and a friend have made recently. Our friendly contributor made most of these poppies while caring for a local shop. As she makes them she enjoys talking about the project to her customers. Quite an amazing woman!
 Along with more poppies that have been finished off today, we're now well over half way to our initial target. We've collected nearly 800 poppies in the past 2 weeks - an amazing effort on everyone's part.

 Thanks all you wonderful poppy makers!

Halfway there -2,500 poppies now boxed up!

We're finding the community response is really wonderful and so supportive. Not only we do have great support from our Anglican Church and the RSL but from the Tuncurry craft shop, other shops around Forster and Tuncurry who are displaying our posters, service and social groups and also many people in the community. The local newspaper, the Great Lakes Advocate has continued to publish our articles and support us also.We're very grateful for this on-going support and encouragement from so many.

On Pentecost Sunday, 8th June, two of our churches used the poppies in the flower arrangements - they looked great. Since then we've had another community Poppy Workshop. There was a great buzz of friendly chatting as the women worked on knitted, crocheted and felt poppies. During the morning a wonderful woman arrived with a bag of 192 poppies!! We were stunned by her contribution, but so thrilled with this. She couldn't stay and join us but said she'll continue making poppies for our community project. Another woman brought in 52 and another 73. I'd also received 55 from one of the ladies at church on Sunday. These, added to those finished and handed in by the wonderful hard working women today, brought our total to 2,500.  This is half of our target and to have reached it already is just amazing. We thanks God for all the enthusiastic women who are making poppies for the Forster-Tuncurry 5000 poppy project and handing them in to us.

The Federation Square 5000 poppy project is going really well too. Lynn Berry and Margaret Knight, the two women who started the project, aimed for 5,000 poppies to carpet Federation Square on ANZAC Day next year. They now have over 12,500 and are now aiming for 25,000! We copied the poppy making idea from them ( with their permission). When I visited them in Melbourne at federation Square on ANZAC Day this year, they were delighted to hear how we were going too.

A women from Forster has just been at Villers- Bretonneux Adelaide cemetery and place some of our poppies on Australian soldiers graves. I understand that she was there with her husband  for D-Day celebrations - just like out PM last weekend. It's so special to think of these poppies which were made here in Forster are now on an Australian grave over in France. We thank her for taking them over and then taking the effort to send us photos of where the poppies had been placed.

We look forward to the next few months as we continue to work hard to achieve our target of 5,000 poppies.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Many thanks everyone - poppy makers and other supporters, such as our wonderful husbands.

I

We continue to be amazed by the number of poppies we're receiving. It's wonderful. One woman sent us 100 that she'd knitted for our project - great work indeed. Many women around the Forster area are handing in bags with 10-30 poppies in each. This means we now have over 1,900 poppies! Our target of 5,000 for ANZAC Day next year looks as if we'll achieve it easily. This means we may be able to give more to the smaller centres around the Great Lakes area to use at their services while still having a large mass of poppies at the Tuncurry memorials. We do plan to send some to the originators of the Poppy project to be used in Federation Square next year.

Julie has been experimenting with the ribbed poppy pattern, doing 3rib as well as 4 rib and a 4 knit, 2 purl rib. Photo below is of these different ribbed poppies. The top left 4 x 2; top right 4 x 4 ; bottom poppy is the 3 x 3 rib. They seem to look a bit more like poppy petals.

Some of our poppies will be decorating the churches at Forster and Tuncurry on Pentecost Sunday 8th June instead of other red flowers - they look marvellous on the branches in vases!

Our crafty Tuesdays continue to be a great time of chat and laughter - as well as poppy making.
The next community workshop is on 10th June and, as usual, is at St Alban's Anglican Church hall, Forster. Hoping to see some of you there.