The meeting started with the chairman, Brenda welcoming members of visiting clubs and then telling us about the Bookham Village Day on Saturday June 18th. This year’s theme was “A day at the races” and the club sometimes have a sales’ table and this year a frieze to match the theme could be made. Sarah offered to coordinate this. Offers or work need to be in by Mid May so it can be assembled.
Several members had visited the Unravel show in Farnham and said it was, again, an excellent show with a good range of yarn, projects etc.
Next month was the AGM followed by Margaret’s talk.
We then welcomed back our speaker Erica Thompson who would be talking to us about her wire knitting and about how pressing matters. 
She started her talk by her describing how she got started with wire knitting and the type of wire she used. Then she gave us the good news – knitted wire doesn’t unravel if you drop a stitch and as it is not distorted by the machine, you can measure it right on the machine. Excellent for those of us who do not like knitting the usual tension squares. There was some bad news too – the wire is not easy to unravel if you make mistakes as it can kink.
We were shown a huge range of samples made using different techniques and during the evening she demonstrated how to make a simple wire bracelet by knitting an I-cord in wire then plaiting or twisting it into a circle. It looked easy but as I found later it takes practice.
The second part of the talk after coffee and delicious cakes, was called “Pressing matters” which is also the name of Erica’s book. Again she described how it all started and how she came to write a book of the same name. Now,sadly out of print but available second hand from several places. She used a steam generator iron which produces high pressure steam. What she showed us was very impressive, there were very creased pieces of knitting all stretched out of shape and with the help of some wire they were blocked and pressed to perfection. Even a ribbed band was revived. many before and after samples were handed round for everyone to see. We also practised threading the wire through the edge of samples to ensure good straight edges.
Finally, she gave some advice on finishing techniques.
After the talk there was time for questions and many of us descended on the sales table inspired to buy some wire to try out the techniques we had been shown.
It only remained for the chairman to thank Erica and we all went home with our enthusiasm renewed.
