Welcome to the 2005 Kansas Mennonite Relief Sale! I'm about to run around and start taking some pictures, but I thought I'd better start with a quick update to let you know what's coming up. It's about 4pm which is the official start of the sale, and there's lot going on! It's a beautiful day with the sun starting to shine through on what started out as a foggy overcast day. I think this will be a wonderful place for people to be today and tomorrow. I'll be back in an hour or so with some pictures.
| Racks and racks of freshly baked bread, pies, cakes, zwieback, noodles, and tasty pastries. These racks will be empty before long. |
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The Quilters Corner and T-Shirt booth also do good business in the Meadowlark Building. Tomorrow this building will host one of the largest MCC Sale Quilt Auctions in the country. Right now the seating for tomorrow's Quilt Auction is pretty empty, with rows and rows of quilts on display in the background. Tomorrow these seats will be full and over 200 quilts and quilt-related items will be auctioned off, raising several hundred thousand dollars for MCC. |
| Loren and Peggy Reusser of Newton visit with Vernelle Voth and her husband Harold (not pictured) after buying some sweet German Kettle Popcorn. |  |
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The Olde Iron Junktion is a regular at the sale -- you never know what you might find! |
| An almost empty tub ready to be filled many times over with pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and other coins in the Penny Challenge. |  |
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Norma Gonzales, Workroom Supervisor at MCC's North Newton branch, along with her son Anthony, ready to answer questions about MCC's many local and worldwide relief projects. What to know where your money is going? They're the ones to ask! |
These pictures should get you started. I'm off to take some more pictures and maybe grab some delicious German food before I get back. I'll do another update in an hour or two. | |
Well, I'm stuffed and got a lot of pictures taken, but due to technical difficulties I'm going to hold off on posting any of those pictures until I get home. Things are starting to wind down here for the day so I'm packing up for the day. Look for the last update for today in another hour or two when I get home and have a chance to process the photos. Then I'll be back again tomorrow for another day's worth of pictures, including the prices of all the quilts as they are sold. But you're going to be here in person for that, aren't you?
| I'm home and have processed a whole bunch of pictures which
I'm uploading now that I have a fast Internet connection. At the sale I'm
uploading all the pictures and website updates over a telephone line, which
can take awhile (uploads are about half the speed of downloads). So without further ado... | |
| Shortly after 5pm the crowds started showing up. |
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| The Moon Walk is a new attraction for Kids this year, as is the Mini Golf. The Hay Maze, Barrel Train, and Big Slide are old favorites. |
| There's always a long line at the Feeding The Multitudes building, but lots of serving lines inside and plenty of seating make the line move pretty well. Plus you can always catch up with friends while waiting in line! |
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| Carol Pope of Hutchinson, here representing the South Hutchinson Mennonite Church, is scooping some delicious ham gravy on top of this girl's Verenika. |
| Seralynn Neff of North Newton begins the careful craft of decorating a Ukrainian Easter Egg. Here are some completed eggs her family has done. |
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| Sammy Neal and Jerry Voth, both of Moundridge, fry up another batch of Verenika. |
| The General Auction starts Friday night because there are too many items to sell them all on Saturday. Along with furniture, there are also wooden toys, wall hangings, collectibles, and this strange table with turntable cars and lights and other things that are fascinating to these kids. |
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| After opening at the Pennsylvania Sale, the traveling quilt exhibit "Passing on the Comfort" moved to the Kansas sale. |
| A prospective buyer checking out the plants. |
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| Lauris Schrag of Moundridge, arms laden with plants, pauses to talk with Tom and Jane Washburn of Newton, behind which you can see a few of the many lovely crafts available for sale in the Kansas Crafts area. |
| Cody and Tim True of Inman and Jessica Daugherty of Hutchinson selling an entire town one house at a time. |
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| Jake Schmidt and the The Bridge provide the Friday night entertainment. |
| A few of the quilts available for perusal the night before the Quilt Auction starts. These quilts will start selling at 8:45am Saturday morning, and I will be posting the prices on the website in the Quilt Gallery throughout the sale tomorrow. |
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| In case you wonder who's doing the talking, this is me, David Godshall of Hesston, getting another Live Update prepared on my notebook computer. Roger Jost, who has helped me in the past with my Live Updates, took the picture. |
Well, I'm calling it a night. I'll be getting up really early (for me) and will try to get in to the sale by 7:30am or earlier, in time to get some breakfast and do an update before the auctions start up at 8:45am and things really start hopping. See you then! | |
Well, I'm up (much earlier than normal for me) and ready to leave to house to go to the sale. I'll get some breakfast, take some pictures, and be back in a couple of hours with another update and ready for the auctions to start!
| Fresh back from breakfast, here's a small set from there to get started. Speaking of starting, the General Auction and the Quilt Auction should be starting soon! | |
| For 25 years, Buhler Mennonite Church has hosted the Saturday Morning Breakfast. From cashiers Mary Schmidt and Reneta Kroeker of Class #5, to pancake dropper Daryl Wall (Valley Center), to master eggsters Alfred Schmidt and Jason Regier -- these are just come of the people that make Breakfast at the sale a reality. |
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| A lot of people are involved in the making of the popular New Years Cookies. First, half a dozen groups of fryers work around large frying vats to get them golden brown. Here we have (clockwise from front-left) Bess Huxman (Pretty Prairie), hidden Louise Janzen (Newton), Stan Bohn (Newton), Grace Regier (Walton), Bill "Dutch" Ediger (Hutchinson), and Mary Ellen Jantz (Buhler). Then Lean Heidebrecht of Inman (right) and Kevin Stucky from Sedgwick dip the dough balls in glaze and dump them out to dry. Finally they are boxed up and conveyed, by Becky Blough in this case, to the Domestic Arts building where they will be sold. Becky, by the way, is also the sale's Publicity Coordinator and gets me a lot of the material I used for the website. |
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| Roland Krause, long time voice of the MCC Sale, makes an announcement. He also sings and whistles pretty tunes upon request, and then stops upon request. I asked him he had any interesting stories, and he said he met a guy fron Denver who comes every year (except for missing last year) who bought 5 mullberry pies to take home. Another couple comes from Portland or Seattle every year and buys 10 quilts. |
| Dan Gehring drives the people mover, giving people a ride from building to building. |
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| A big thanks to Keith Allen who helped keep the quilt price
updates going while I want out to take some more pictures. Here are a few of them
to start with: | |
| Thanks to this crowd at the quilt auction, the quilt display area is now half empty. |
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| Quilt item 109, a 39" x 50" wallhanging called "The Quilters Garden" selling. It eventually went for $500. |
| Gary Wohlgemuth of Wichita mixes up a batch of pancake batter. Near by Deb Brubacher (Hesston) flips a pancake while Margie Wohl (Wichita) and Josh Russel (Hesston) look from one side and Corissa Russel (Hesston) looks on from the other side. |
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| Matt Ham from Guthrie, Oklahoma, helps a customer buy some fruit at the Caps and Yardsticks (and more) stand, with Nick Nosley, a friend who has graced these Live Coverage pages numerous times before, in the background. |
| Dolan Fast of Hutchinson loads another can of coins into the coin counting machine while Riley Krehbiel talks to a salegoer. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of pennies and other coins are raised each year as part of the Penny Challenge. |
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| The quilt auction just finished, and the surplus auction should
be starting before too long. The general auction is still going strong. | |
| Bertha Janzen of Buhler (left) and Vernadene Christensen of Buhler (right) cut slices of pie which Karen Loganbill of Moundridge takes to the servers in the Feeding The Multitudes. |
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| The Big People Mover passing the Little People Mover. |
| This symbolic Broken Bread was sold many times at this sale and at other sales, and will continue to sell at other sales around North America this year. |
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| Nancy Stucky of Kingman talks to Sharon Klickner, also of Kingman. This is the staging area where they get the immediately upcoming quilts ready to be auctioned off. Quilt #138, pictured here on the rotating quilt display, is about to be auctioned off here. It went for $450. |
I will try to get one more round of pictures taken and posted before I start shutting down and thinking about going home. | |
Things are winding down here, with the Surplus Auction well underway. Once most everything else is shut down, the Surplus Auction goes to work selling anything that didn't sell during the sale. You can sometimes get absolute steals here. I picked up two pies, not for an absolute steal in this case, but they look just as yummy.
I'll post a few more pictures in a couple hours after I get home. Right now it's time to start packing it up and getting out of here, a little fuller, a little poorer, a little more tired, and a little happier.
| Auctioning off the remaining items. Since it is impossible to predict how many people will buy which items, there are always items left over at the end of the sale. These items were donated, so the Surplus Auction is there to make sure every donation turns into money for MCC. Sometimes this means incredible bargains for the person who is at the right place at the right time, and the Surplus Auction can easily be that right place and time. |
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| Coming down to near the end of the General Auction. |
| A feature of the Mini Golf course I hadn't noticed when I saw it earlier -- recognize the design around the hole (the hole is the eye)? |
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| In the Ten Thousand Villages area in the Sunflower South building (Crafts and Plants), a lot of crafts made around the world are available. Ten Thousand Villages works with artisans who would otherwise be unemployed or underemployed, providing sustainable income through fair trade. |
| Three of the Amateur Radio volunteers who help behind the scenes (mostly) with emergency communications and various health and welfare type issues. This sale was especially quiet and non-eventful from an emergency standpoint for these guys. Pictured here are Bob Harder, W0BH, of Hesston area, Kent Harder (no relation), N0XOS, of Newton, and Ron Glanzer, N0SVC, of Newton. |
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| Roger Wilson, KD0AY, of Newton is also a Ham, plus he plays with radios. Here he's giving a couple tired salegoers, Amber and Carolyn Peck of Topeka, a ride to another building so they can pick up all the stuff they bought. |
| Keith Allen, KD7ZYS, whom I mentioned earlier, helped my do some of the updates during the sale, allowing the quilt updates to happen a little more frequently and regularly while I was able to get some more pictures taken. Any slowness of quilt pricing updates was probably before he got here or after I took it over again! Keith is a computer student at Hesston College. |
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| The two pies I bought at the Surplus Auction. They aren't on my diet, so I'm going to have to take them in to work on Monday and let my coworkers eat half of them. |
I received the following "Early Results" (
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from Becky Blough, sale publicity coordinator:
Hutchinson--A mixture of beautiful weather and generous giving combined for a successful receipt raising $344,783.40 for Mennonite Central Committee at the Kansas Mennonite Relief Sale April 8 and 9 in Hutchinson.
"With the great weather, I think everyone was able to come out and enjoy time with their family to make the 37th Kansas Mennonite Relief Sale a wonderful success," said Rod Chrystie, KMRS chair.
The two auctions raised a little under $142,000--the quilt $95,917 and the general $36,000. The estimated attendance was 18,500.
The top selling quilts were Floral Nine-Patch by Friendship Circle, Southern Hills Mennonite, Topeka, $3.900; Pinwheel Garden Quilt by Peacemakers, Pleasant Valley Mennonite, Harper, $3,400; and Country Grape by Amish of Lancaster Country, Penn., donated by Herb and Lily Ann Neufeld, Hesston, $3,300.
The General Auction top sellers included the 1954 McCormick Farmall Cub at $2,900 and Arnold Regehr, Inmans, reunion table at $2,150.
Other notable amounts include: the Run for Relief, $13,300, and the Penny Power Challenge, $20,296 (up over $1,000 from last year's collection).
"We appreciate everyones efforts to help raise money for the work of MCC to further their relief efforts throughout the world," said Chrystie.
Providing relief is MCC's focus--relief for tsunami victims, Aids pandemic, war refugees and needy in North American and throughout the world.