A couple of months ago, our lovely soprano Avril spotted an appeal for volunteers to knit and crochet little mice to help nursery children with their transition into the "big school" and and she put out a call for the InChorus crafters to assemble.

The Border Buddies scheme was launched by local councillor, Fay Sinclair, and aimed to provide every child moving from nursery to Primary 1 with a little pocket friend, this year to be accompanied by a copy of the book Mouse’s Big Day by Lydia Monks. 

The Melodic Mousers WhatApp group was formed and quickly became a tight knit community, sharing photos, successes and questions as our mischief of mice grew by the day. Some were kidnapped by grandchildren along the way, but we smashed Avril's target of 100 mice and spent a lovely morning enjoying cake and coffee in her wonderful garden so we could hand our colourful charges over to Fay.

We had a lot of fun with this side-gig, we hope that the children of the Scottish Borders will love their new friends as much as we do. We even made it into The Borders Telegraph!