Hi there from Don and me,

We hope you had fun over the Festive Season. Perhaps the ‘Festive Verse’ page added a little piquancy to the proceedings? Thanks to all those who sent us a contribution.

Showcase is, as usual, filled with an interesting selection of work. There’s a poem by Bob Hume, a member or Clyde Valley Writers' Group, a short excerpt from her forthcoming novel by Carol McKay, two needle-felted characters by Liza Ritchie, a member of Handspun, a photograph by Helen Johnston, a painting by Eileen Hood and a song by Haggerdash. Thanks and best wishes to them for creating works for us to enjoy.

Starting this month, we have added a new page 'Group Meeting Days' which sets out, in a table, all the groups which regularly meet on certain days of the week. There is a link from there to the group's entry on our GROUP pages. From that, anyone who is interested in discovering or joining a group can find out where and when the group meets and any other information which we keep on the page about that group. From now on we will not automatically list these regular group meetings on the EVENTS pages but we will, as always, list on our EVENTS pages all events, regular or not, where we are sent the details in advance. If you know of a group which you feel should be added to our Group Meeting Days table please let us know.

People often tell us how much they look forward to browsing through the monthly Showcase. Ask any of those who have sent work and they will tell you how much they have enjoyed the experience. Yet we still find we spend a lot of time collecting the work for Showcase when we had hoped it would gradually evolve as a resource and the painters, writers, photographers, craftspeople and musicians would just send work to us without being prompted.

This year we appeal to all those listed on www.clydevalley.net either as an individual or in a group, to send work TODAY for Showcases throughout 2007. On Showcase we offer you a unique place where you can share your work for the pleasure of our visitors and yourself. As well as that we try to help you by slotting paintings into Showcase around the time of the artist’s exhibitions, or mp3 music tracks to coincide with new CD releases, or excerpts from new publications around the release date. You just need to let us know such details. Please don’t hesitate! Send us work today or email us to commit yourself to sending work in a month in 2007. We will slot work into the months ahead as it comes in. A gap of six months will separate contributions by individuals. As I write we have no work for next month. Come on! We’re a couple of geriatrics here – give us a hand!

Thanks to all those who have checked events and informed us of changes.

If you have any thoughts about the newsletter or any aspect of clydevalley.net in general, why not send us an email and let us know?

Joanne and Don