It has been lovely to have people back at ACC … here’s some pictures from our preserve makers. So … put some medlar jelly, cucumber 🥒 pickles and tomato 🍅 relish on your must buy list this Christmas! Our makers market is coming up next Saturday 27th November. Pop past from 10am-1pm for a sausage sizzle kindly run by the Ivanhoe Rotary, some family friendly Christmas craft … and local shopping. We’ll have 25 stalls all run by people from the neighbourhood selling locally made things … how lovely (and a GREAT way for you to have a more sustainable Christmas by reducing your ‘shopping miles’ through locally made gifts). Hooray!

We are delighted to feature the whimsical drawings of Marianna Marx on the fence at ACC as part of the Alphington Neighbourhood Gallery.

Marianna runs Gloworm Studios down in Fairfield (on the south side of Fairfield train station) and it is wonderful to be able to showcase and support her artistic endeavours in our local community.

You can find further information about her and the works in the ANG exhibition here. And then … take a walk past ACC and check them out on our fence!

Local artist Rose Kulak did an fabulous job this year replacing our Science Week in-person eco-dyeing workshop with a take home kit. Over 20 families collected the kits from us. I know I’ll never look at sour grass (oxalis) now without thinking about the amazing colours it can produce in a dye bath.

As a follow-up Rose has now put together a second kit that is an introduction to contact printing with natural dyes … onion skins, eucalyptus leaves etc. The kit includes all the materials you will need along with a step by step instruction sheet … it will make a wonderful weekend or mid-week project.

If you emailed us previously for one of these kits please pop in and collect it this week. If you haven’t put your name down but would like to collect a kit and have a go please email us here.

And thanks again Rose for sharing your skills. What a great community we live in!

Happy days! I picked up a new (to me) Kate Atkinson book from our street library today. The library is nice and full again, including a good selection of books for children - could be perfect on a rainy weekend.

Thanks whoever dropped this book off - I am looking forward to reading it this weekend.

What did you miss the most in lockdown? For me (apart from friends and family of course) it was rifling through others people’s junk! So I am excited to see this garage sale coming up … thanks for sending your flyer through Catriona.