Saturday 30th January 2010

We had our open day on Thursday 21st January and I think it may have been a success. Duffryn Clydach environmental group turned out to support us as did Mo Green from the MOreGreen Project at Swansea. A lady from Bridgend came to take a pack of bags which she will sew at home and the National Autistic Society came. The Young Offenders team was present and I have to say that we are finding these boys a pleasure to work with. Hesitant at first about sewing bags, they have taken to it like ducks to water and it is lovely to be able to work together on a project which all are enthusiastic about. It has crossed my mind a lot during the last week - The life of a long distant bag runner is a busy one - This is a mammoth task and one not made easier by the fact we cannot leave anything out in the Community Centre when we work there as all has to be cleared and set up the next time we go there. However we have decided we do not moan but make the best of what we have and get on with the job. My nephew Daniel is there for the long haul and is a blessing when it comes to problems with the machines. He is also sewing very well to date. We now have 2 overlockers which are helping us enormously and we now realise how much material we have to collect for this task. We had 6 separate donations of material this week much of which is excellent but we run short co9nstantly of plain material for the backs of the bags as this is the side that will have the transfer printed logo. Too many fronts and not enough backs is the constant cry. We have made some beautiful bags from Laura Ashley samples and I think they are going to be the up market logo bags when we eventually hand them over. I watched one of the young boys working with us last week tenderly folding each completed bag into a box and counting them and realised even young boys admire beautiful materials and seeing objects being created out of nothing. This week we should have completed 300 hundred bags. I had a telephone call from a lady in Swansea who desperately wants to come up and join us for a day or 2 and wants to crochet plastic bags. Hurrah, a break through, someone as mad as me :) I now have to look for transport to get her to us. Where there is a will there is a way they tell me. Today I had my whole family to visit, so today I live in normality, tomorrow it is back to the sewing machine and onwards and upwards.