At our annual picnic I was awarded a lifetime membership to the Guild called the Renaissance Membership. BeckyT and NancyS, my two most favored mentors and friends nominated me. It's a very exclusive club; I only see 8 listed in the directory and at least 1 is dead and 2 have moved to the other side of the country. I've been a member since 2016 as I prepared to retire. Diane Focht was the President at the time and at my first meeting she laid out procedures for folding if no one wanted to take the reins when her term was up.
I volunteered to take on the newsletter and since the website came with it JudyR gave me that too. It took a few months for us to change the website from HTML to Blogspot and get all the links correct. I didn't have great Internet connectivity at home so that was another challenge. Then came COVID. LizzyT had no co-president, no Board, and was not at all a social person so we nearly folded again. Membership dwindled to about 40 from about 80 and most of the remaining members were afraid to gather. We tried to distance ourselves at Spring Creek Park, Karen Power's idea. That was fine until late October when our fingers wouldn't hold on to a needle. Then some of us met at the community room in the Mall. It didn't have great circulation so was a bit humid especially when the roof leaked, but parking and price were great.
One day as COVID things eased up Becky approached me to be co-presidents. I'd been thinking of how to get the Guild back on track and I knew that with Becky's fabulous people skills we could do it. We gathered an unofficial board together and met at Good Day Cafe outside in March to plan. I think our first whole-Guild meeting was in June at Orchard Park for elections. We'd been sending out our plans in the monthly newsletter. We had the picnic catered by Subway or Wegmans. That became a tradition. Our Board was elected and we were off and running.
We changed a few things, but no one said anything. It was hard to settle on a place to meet. No one wanted a large group in their space. We moved around from church to church to Ferguson Twp meeting room before finally finding Blue Course Community Church for evenings, with CindyR's help, and Pine Grove Lutheran for afternoons. It's better to have a set location. As it is we still have to tell our cars what day it is, so we get to the right place. St. John's in Boalsburg has been a constant QBs Tuesday.
We changed the layout of Wednesdays. We made it more of a workshop and show and tell with a theme. MSQC has several tutorials that we used: Quartered Stripe and Charms on Point were two. We had a show and tell of bags; JudyR brought a big bag with what seemed like thousands of smaller ones stuffed inside like the circus clowns in a car. We met several months at LynnS's community room until we got too popular for the space. Then we were on the lookout again.
Meanwhile were always looking for programs. The program person can't do it all so Becky and I led an excursion into Ricky Timm's Convergence and Nancy, Karen, and I did a collage program. We were modeling team work here.
The Guild is still going so I guess I helped. I've given both the newsletter and website away but keep my nose to the gossip.
Thanks fo all who followed me and my team. The last time I did anything like this was in Germany as President of the International Women's Club. Then I had a fabulous VP who had all the social skills I didn't.
No comments:
Post a Comment