We had a very successful weekend and we have made £643 in the Silent Auction.  This money will go towards an Educational Bursary in the future - where it will be used will be discussed at the next Council Meeting.

The Exhibition will be still be available at Reading Central Library until next Saturday, 25 October.    It is a wonderful exhibition so if you do get the chance, please visit it.

The Swap packages have all been either sent out or taken by individuals at the AGM weekend.   What a treat!   21 people took part so there was lots of variety.

The 2014 Strands magazine has also been published.    It will be posted to all Braid Society members in the next couple of weeks. 

The Braid Society’s Biennial Exhibition is now on display in Reading Central Library and runs until 25^th October.  There are 60 wonderful exhibits covering a wide range of techniques and submitted by members from the UK and internationally. Do visit if you can and be inspired.  The Society’s 20^th Anniversary AGM weekend (17-19 October) is being held a short drive away at Wokefield Park.  The AGM will be held there on Saturday 18^th October from 1.15pm – all Braid Society members are welcome.  Strands 2014 will be available for collection.  In addition there is to be a Silent Auction of the braiding equipment, threads and books donated by Mrs Hlia Douglas from her time studying in Japan.  The proceeds will establish a bursary fund for learning at Braids2016.

Further details of all these things can be found under the Events menu - the Silent Auction details are shown on a separate page

It is that time of year again!   The emails for your membership renewal will be in your inbox in the next few days.    Renewing your membership is very simple and can be done online.   As an alternative, you can still send in a renewal form or even pay your subscription directly into our bank account.    The email provides you with all the information.

As always, if you have any questions, please send an email to treasurer at braidsociety.com or give me a call.

If you are coming to the AGM, you can renew there as well since the Council members will be there - we look forward to seeing as may of you as possible at the meeting. 

The AGM weekend is getting closer!   There is still time to come and join us.   All the details are under Events - it is a fantastic venue, we have great teachers and it will be a wonderful gathering of friends so, if you have been thinking about it but not made a decision - decide now and join us! 

We are in the process of moving our website www.braidsociety.com to the new site.   Please bear with us while we resolve a few teething errors.

We have fixed the issue with email addresses so contact addresses at braidsociety.com are working again as normal.  

If you cannot remember your password, follow the instructions to get a new one.

I hope you are thinking about items for our exhibition.  

The Travelling Exhibition subject for 2015 is 'Spring is Sprung'.    Some of you might like to make something for the Biennial Exhibition that could then go on to the Travelling Exhibition.   There is no requirement to do this, the Biennial Exhibition has no particular theme and, as far as possible, all items submitted will be displayed.

The exhibition will be housed in glass cabinets as they were in Manchester.   The maximum height of any exhibit is 30 cm, a better height would be 15 cm  because there are a limited number of shelves that can accommodate 30 cm.  Since the exhibition will not have stewards, it is intended that the exhibits will be inside the glass cabinets.   Although there is wall space, attaching items is not easy and they may fall off.

As always, we are anticipating a wonderful selection of items so get busy and get braiding. 

The March 2014 newsletter has been sent to all members, either by email or post.    The newsletter contains the forms for the exhibition as well as details about the AGM weekend. 

Registrations are now open for the AGM, please look on the events page and scroll down to October.   We have discovered a minor glitch that the user cannot change the amount they pay so, if you don't want to pay the full amount, please leave the page.

We are slowly adding content to the site and this week our first member tried out the Braids and Bands forum.   You can go in and subscribe to the forums and, having sorted out a setting, all members can create, read and reply to posts.

Over time, we hope to expand this.

Have fun!

The members directory has been move to the members only area.   It was a mistake to have it in the public view. 

An additional page has been added to the members area to link to old newsletters.  If you have lost yours or cannot find the email, you can always find the current newsletters here.

We are starting to build up the information on the site so keep coming back to see what we are doing.

Thanks to everyone who has managed to log on and have a look around.   We have spent our time getting the membership database right and there is no other content on this site yet.......   At the moment there is nothing in the members area but over the next few weeks/months we will put more information onto the site.   

We will have much more opportunity to load photos and other documents on this site so over time we will transition across to here

Thank you for your patience