Open Day :: Imbolc

We'll be holding our very first open day at co-op on Thursday, August 21st and we'd love it if you'd join us! Seasonal celebrations have always been such a wonderful way to bring our families together to mark the nature and abundance around us, so we'll be creating seasonal celebrations for each of our open days going forward.

Our first winter open day will be a belated celebration of Imbolc. Traditionally, Imbolc is a time when we first start noticing the stirrings of spring. It's a celebration of the passing of winter,  the lengthening days and stirring seeds give us hope for the warmer seasons ahead. Imbolc is a wonderful time to mark new beginnings and to set plans into action. It's a time of reawakening and a beautiful time to welcome our friends to co-op.

Open day activities will include:

* Yarn bombing our beloved tree with colour and love. Sadly, the tree we gathered under was pruned to a tall stump a few weeks ago, so we saw fit to nurture it and create some new happy memories with it. We'd love contributions of hand knitted or crocheted squares, blankets or lengths of fabric or yarn to cover what's left of our tree on the day.

* Making seed bombs to plant in the co-op grounds or take home and plant in your garden at home. A little guerrilla gardening and seasonal observance all in one…

* Beeswax candle rolling and decorating - for lighting the remaining days of winter through to spring!  There will be a small additional cost for this.

We've discovered some public barbecues in from of the hall, so we intend to make use of these on the day, so bring along anything you'd like to cook up for your family or to share.

The open day will cost $4 per family. All are welcome to come along and join in, both old and new friends! We hope to see you there! xx

Sharing Skills

Much of our talk at co-op lately has been about what skills we have between us that we can pool and share. Realising that creating a culture of sharing and learning is strengthening and nourishing for our group and its members, we aim to draw out those skills as we grow together. Adults learning from other adults inspires children to get involved and learn alongside their parents, or their peers. And finding skills that the children can share with each other is wonderful too! Kids are always so keen to learn what their friends can do…

Last week, one of the children facilitated a Manga drawing workshop while one of the parents facilitated a granny-square crochet workshop. Long held crocheting and manga drawing ambitions were fulfilled! And we got a start on preparing to yarn bomb our tree. By the end of the session, children were learning to crochet too! Some of the crocheting parents were rather keen to learn the art of manga, so we may need a repeat performance of that one at a later date!

Our Tree...

Quite shockingly, one day we arrived at co-op to find our beloved tree severely pruned back to a tall stump. You can read more about it here.

We hadn't realised just how much of the magic of our little co-op had been wrapped up in that beautiful, shady tree. But it's something we've come to realise in the weeks since.

We'll be planning a yarn bombing project for the tree, to make it a cheerier place to be and to honour what was. We're hoping friends from our wider community might feel moved to join in and celebrate with us and look forward with us...

Fungi Walking

One of the fantastic things about co-op is the sharing of knowledge, within the group and across generations. By learning together, we share skills and new ideas and parents learn alongside children, meaning information can be delved into more deeply away from co-op as more questions arise… And it keeps us adults inspired to learn new things too!

One of our parents is an avid fungi enthusiast and offered to lead a fungi walk in some bushland just down the road from our cottage. We were a bit amazed by the diversity so close to town! Highlights included seeing a number of earth star fungi and some beautiful early orchids hiding along the bank, beside a creek. So much beauty around us everywhere and it's wonderful to slow down and acknowledge it together, if only fleetingly.

Winter Solstice at Co-op

The cooler weather has seen us return back indoors for a portion of our gatherings at the cottage. For the Winter Solstice, we treated ourselves to a large delivery of new art and craft supplies and settled in for some freestyle crafting, snowflake making, popcorn bird feeder making, and drawing.

There was much happy creative work and play as we celebrated the shortest day of the year together in our little cottage. New skills were gained, celebrated and shared and (thanks to a large amount of glitter), we all went home sparkling!