Sasha Celebration weekend 2016 - part 1

The night before the Sasha Celebration weekend I was busy cutting marionette strings, printing out instructions and bagging up the 45 kits.

A tray full of marionette parts before bagging them up into kits

On Friday I packed, collected an excited young lady from school at 3pm, welcomed Jocelyn who was travelling with us, loaded the car and off we went to Nottingham.  We were the last to arrive (just after 6pm because of heavy Friday afternoon traffic on the M1), so the others were already assembling in the bar area for pre-dinner chatting.  Jocelyn (who traveled light) was a star helper as we brought our workshop boxes and entire collection of Sasha dolls (12) plus 4 other dolls to our room.

Soon we were enjoying a delicious meal with Sasha friends - it was wonderful to meet everyone and renew friendships face to face which are usually conducted online.  Some people had traveled a considerable distance for the celebration - we had one person from Australia, one from Germany, one from Switzerland, one from Spain and two from the USA.  We sat with Lorraine, Jocelyn, Alison (whom I had not met before), Jo, Iris and Jane W.

Melanie and Nina  - my two newest Sasha girls at the dinner table on Friday evening

Isabel my daughter's Makie doll at the dinner table

Edmund and Laura like the look of their girl's chocolate and orange pudding

Melanie and Nina, my pudding, with Jocelyn and Alison enjoying their conversation

After dinner the £1 bazaar was held (we made 2 donations and bought one thing) and we took our raffle contributions to one of the rooms the Sasha Celebration was using, bought some raffle tickets and admired Janet's glorious dolls already on display.

Janet's beautiful dolls awaiting more friends

 The Robin Hood forest scene was being set up, at this stage it had Janet's dolls, the backdrop and the fireplace.

The Robin Hood scene with Janet's dolls

Janet and Ginger's lovely dolls as Robin Hood and Maid Marian (thanks for the correction Janet)

The top raffle prize was a doll with a beautiful sweater and accessories donated by Gayle, who could not join us for the Celebration.

Mikey waiting for the Saturday and his new lucky owner

There were 2 tables covered with raffle prizes and they kept on coming - everyone was so generous.  With this promise of an exciting Saturday ahead of us, we said goodnight to our friends and went to bed.