Christmas Angels

What do you do when you are handed a black plastic garbage bag containing two wire coat hangers, some tinsel, two white garbage bags, a toilet roll and some ribbon?  You make a Christmas Angel - what else?

It's the end of November, which means the round of Christmas parties has commenced.  Yesterday Schoolhouse Quilters' day group held their party, with the usual games, gift swaps, much laughter and at the end of the day a heart-warming story.

A veteran of twenty of these events, I was cunning enough to avoid acting as a model/victim in the Christmas Angel game, choosing instead to help create the vision above (of course, our team won).

Mind you, we had some stiff competition!



Representative of the McIntyre Centre (l) accepting cheque from
Schoolhouse Quilters' president Alison Campbell (r)
























Our charity quilt raffle this year raised $2,600 for the McIntyre Centre, a horse-riding academy for the disabled.  This centre is not far from where I live and I know that it carries out a magnificent job in teaching disabled children and young adults to ride, giving them such self-confidence and pride.  Some pupils have represented Australia in the Paralympic Games.  Sadly, there are over 250 children on the waiting list, a five year wait for most of them, but as the Centre has to rely mainly on donations to keep running, these poor children will probably wait in vain.  Government bodies waste so much money on some pretty silly schemes - here is a truly worthy cause, so I hope they are listening.

We were asked to bring along a photo from our teen years and it obviously taxed our brains figuring out just who was who.  I brought along a picture taken when I was 15 and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when everyone picked it straight away.

Time for a sumptuous lunch and the opening of the Christmas swap gifts.

And the heart-warming story?  I noticed an elderly lady who I had never seen before.  She was soon joined by a group of quilters and I assumed that she was mother to one of them.  It was only later I was told that she is local to the area and suffers from dementia.  She usually wanders into the hall to see what's going on that day.  One of our members recognised her and took her under her wing.  Word was sent to her husband that she was in safe hands and she sat down and enjoyed a lovely lunch and watched our antics with amusement.  Then she was taken safely home. 

True Christmas Angels.