These four small handmade brooches are a departure from my more usual Brooch of the Month offerings. They were made by my friend Marghanita Green who is an enthusiastic and talented crafter, whenever you receive a card from Marghanita it will be handmade and personalised. She is also the wife of the artist and illustrator Michael N Green who produced all the illustrations for my Susan Tate stories. As a keen knitter myself I could not resist buying some of these mini knitting needle brooches.
Each year on the last Friday of September Marghanita and Michael host a Macmillan tea party to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support. Friends come from far and wide to enjoy a cup of tea and a piece of homemade cake. There is always a wide range of cakes to choose from, I usually make ‘Blackberry Friands’ a Mary Berry recipe.
The first Macmillan coffee morning was hosted in 1990, since then there have been thousands of coffee mornings and afternoon tea parties across the country raising money to support people living with cancer. The Macmillan coffee mornings and tea parties have raised over £310million.
In the UK there are almost 3.5 million people living with cancer, on average someone is diagnosed with cancer at least every 90 seconds and around 167,000 people die from cancer which is an average of 460 people every day (source Macmillan Cancer Support). Macmillan Cancer Support was founded by Douglas Macmillan. Douglas was born in Somerset in 1884, he joined the civil service in 1902 specialising in public health, was Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and a staunch vegetarian. His father died of cancer in 1911 making a profound impression on Douglas and with an initial donation of just £10 the charity was founded in 1911. Douglas himself died of cancer in 1969 at the age of 84.
