It’s Remembrance Day this weekend, so the word for today’s Photo Challenge set by Postcard from Gibraltar is Remembrance.

Everyone has made a big effort this year for Remembrance Day as it’s 100 years since the end of WW1. There are some amazing displays of knitted poppies, the Women’s Institute have been involved in many, but often it is just community spirit that has created these beautiful displays.

My WI Craft Club spent an afternoon earlier in the year knitting poppies for Ripon, our Federation office is in Ripon so the WI were asked to make about 3,000, many WI’s within our Federation took part and our poppies were used to decorate the town hall…

Here in Otley someone had the vision to create a sea of 18,000 poppies, one for each resident of Otley, each one has been hand-knitted. The resulting display is stunning…

A few years ago the Tower of London made a huge display of poppies pouring over the parapets into the moat, I went down to London especially to see it, it was very moving. This year they have lit thousands of lanterns in the moat for a river of light.

One of the most beautiful and moving displays I’ve seen is at St John’s churchyard in Slimbridge, a local artist (whose name unfortunately I can’t find) made lifesize sculptures of WW1 soldiers from chicken wire, they are positioned at the foot of every soldiers grave. The see-through nature of chickenwire makes it quite ethereal. 

A couple of years ago I embroidered a poppy with silk ribbon. This year I was asked to embroider a square for Embroiderers Guild for a map of Skipton, I decided to use my poppy to represent the cenotaph. I embroidered “Lest we forget” underneath and it is now part of our pictoral map.

Earlier this year I embroidered a Faby Reilly design of poppies, it’s a humbug shape and it’s now on display on our sideboard.

Faby Reilly Poppy Humbug

This was a proud Mum moment when my daughter laid the wreath on behalf of the Army Cadets in Otley.

I’ll finish this post of remembrance with some photos of poppies from the summer.