Seven GoodGymmers met Michelle from the Craft Coop at the Community Centre to begin work on their monumental poppy display for Remembrance Day.

Michelle shared the story behind the installation: the Craft Coop are creating multiple panels of knitted and crocheted poppies that will be hung from a church in Windsor as a flowing memorial. Many people — including some GoodGymmers — have already contributed poppies, and the team have collected around 12,000 so far.

All of these poppies need to be attached to netting panels that will form a dramatic “river of poppies.” The panel we worked on tonight was a test piece, used to calculate the final weight of the installation (including when wet) to ensure it can be safely displayed.

Shelia, Hannah, Jen, Jess and Anne‑Laure took on the task of attaching poppies under Michelle’s guidance. Each poppy needed to be sewn securely to the canvas without overlapping too much — a chance for the Craft Coop to refine the best layout and attachment method for the final panels.

Meanwhile, Amy and Deepti were entrusted with creating the two large feature poppies that will be included in the installation. They stitched together pre‑cut plastic canvas, added the black centre, and began attaching the red pom‑poms. These oversized poppies are already looking fantastic and will be real showstoppers once finished.

It was satisfying to make visible progress, but this project will take many volunteers and many hours to bring to life. Keep your eyes peeled — we’ll be putting on more sessions to help this beautiful memorial become a reality.

The Craft Coop needed help transporting their shop fittings and other belongings out of the Nicholsons Centre before it is demolished. Five amazing GoodGymers offered their time to help, and joined the shop managers and their family members, plus Neil from Bridge Rotary The plan was to load up cars with the stuff and then unload them at the other end. Heidi turned up with her Mini and we did wonder how many items we could fit in, but luckily there were other car boots available too. We loaded the cars up, then walked some of the bulkier items round to the Town Hall. We unloaded the items, taking them through a rabbit warren of passageway and stairs, to the storage room. Several carloads later we completed our task and the storage room was full! Thank you to Angela, Christine, Diya, Sheila and Viv for giving up their time and energy - the Craft Coop is extremely grateful.

Nine crafty GoodGymers responded to a plea from the Craft Coop to assist in the production of poppies which will be used to decorate Windsor Parish Church for Remembrance Sunday. This ambitious project will see thousands of poppies cascading down the front of the church. Poppies could be made of any textile as long as they are weatherproof! The Goodgymers exercised their fingers, thumbs and brains knitting and crocheting over 235 poppies between them in their spare time. Thanks all, it's a great contribution to this community project, and the Craft Coop are extremely grateful

Jen, Angela and Viv arrived during the final stages of the Town Show, to join Sheila who had been undertaking various tasks during the afternoon.

Now we were #TeamTakeDown making sure vehicles exited the site safely, helping stallholders pack their stalls away, minding stalls whilst stall holders brought their cars closer to load and then made sure stallholders vehicles exited the site safely. The High Street was soon returned to normal appearance and we all went our separate ways home but not before Sheila and Angela collected their award winning competition entries.

Sheila, Jen and Angela helped out during Maidenhead Town Show, a great community event raising funds for Thames Valley Adventure Playground. our tasks were varied, including looking after the Craft area, selling raffle tickets, blowing up balloons, checking that stallholders were Ok, and bringing them teas & coffees. It was great to be able to contribute to such a lovely event despite the weather, and Sheila was very excited to meet Alex Horne and tell him all about Goodgym!

Sheila and myself had an early start this morning, as Goodgym volunteers for the Maidenhead Town Show set-up. We joined the other voluteers and, unlike last year, we had more of a supervisory role rather than hands-on. We started directing the cars arriving to their allocated stall spot on the High Street. Then Sheila got kitted with a walkietalkie and helped sort out any impromptu issues, while I was posted by the main entrance to the Nicholson Centre with the mission of only allowing authorised personnel and stall holders in until opening time. As a bonus, we were present to the opening ceremony, where the local MP, the Mayor and Alex Horne declared the show open. Let the fun begin!