The Army Museum's call for one knitted poppy for every New Zealander who lost their lives in World War I has been answered from one end of the country to the other, but a very local version of the campaign began at Te Ahu in Kaitaia yesterday.
Gayleen McGlashan, Jenny Williams and Raewyn Jackson made themselves comfortable in the atrium and then set about adding to the 106 poppies needed, one for every fallen soldier who will be acknowledged in a museum display on Saturday. By morning tea time they had reached the halfway mark, and were showing no signs of slowing down.
Others who couldn't be at Te Ahu undertook last week to make a contribution to the pile from home.
Gayleen, Raewyn and Jenny were rewarded with more than the knowledge that what they were doing was a good thing, however. They had a box of Anzac biscuits to look forward to, courtesy of Pam Mearns (of Due North Foods fame), who baked one batch of the familiar variety and another truer to the original, much smaller and reportedly significantly harder than the contemporary version.
(The Northland Age cannot confirm the texture, as it was told it didn't need one).
