Since her very first entry 62 years in the past, Sandra Corridor has been a stalwart of Mid Canterbury A&P Exhibits.
From pet lambs to knitting tasks and attractive baking, present season has been Corridor’s time to shine.
And this 12 months she’s as soon as once more been a busy bee.
When she spoke to the Guardian earlier than the Ashburton A&P Present kicked off yesterday, Corridor was busy organising the show for the artwork and portray part, hanging some splendid wanting work on chains in opposition to a big white show stand.
Corridor has been the supervisor for the artwork and portray part since 2007.
“I really like doing it.”
This 12 months her group has created two units of butterfly wings and a cap with feelers for kids to have their images taken consistent with this 12 months’s present theme – Let’s Create a Buzz: Bees, Bugs and Butterflies.
After organising the artwork work show, she deliberate to move residence to make a few of her baking entries so that they have been recent for presentation the next morning.
Corridor mentioned her preserves and fruit loaves have been performed, however she nonetheless needed to make the breads, muffins and sponges she deliberate to enter.
“The stuff that does not preserve, you must make nearer to the Friday morning,” she mentioned.
She additionally had two knitting entries on this 12 months’s present. One was completed some time in the past, however her bigger mission was solely completed with a day or two to spare.
For Corridor, coming into A&P exhibits is in her DNA. Rising up, her household entered the Mayfield present yearly. Her father entered his greens and her mom entered baking.
Corridor’s first A&P entries have been a pet lamb and a calf again in 1961 and 1962.
As an adolescent and into early maturity she entered her artwork works.
When she returned from Australia in 1987, Corridor gravitated again to the Mayfield present and by 1991 began to enter the Ashburton present.
She has two packing containers stuffed with entry tickets and rosettes – one from Mayfield and one other from Ashburton.
“Covid was the one time I ended,” she mentioned.
In a typical 12 months, Corridor begins begins to plan the next 12 months’s entries simply after Christmas – any bigger tasks wanted to be deliberate round her fulltime job at Ashford Handicrafts.
Nevertheless, she plans to retire on the finish of March subsequent 12 months and can then have extra time for her crafts and present entries.
For Corridor the A&P exhibits have been an integral a part of her life. Her youngsters and grandchildren have all taken half, too.
“It is all concerning the pleasure and environment.”
That environment can be on full show as we speak, because the crowds head down on what is anticipated to be a sunnier time out than the primary day of the present.
By Sharon Davis