| Now Started! |
Between updates, you can also enjoy Last Year's Live Coverage |
Now Started! |
[Start with the newest entry (at the bottom)]
This page will be updated regularly during the sale with the latest news and pictures from the sale. If you just couldn't make it to the sale this year, you can at least get a taste for what you missed and start making plans to come next year (April 17-18, 2009). You can also visit this page after you get back from the sale to relive the experience!
Last Year's Live Coverage is still available. Also, if you won't be able make it but would still like to help by donating some money or items or time, see the More Information Page for contact and contribution information.
New entries will be added at the bottom so if you want to go straight to the latest entry you might want to start at the bottom. You might also need to select Refresh or Reload on your browser if the new information doesn't seem to be showing up.
Welcome to the 2008 Kansas Mennonite Relief Sale! Just getting things set up, I'll be back with some initial pictures soon.
| Is today perfect Relief Sale weather? Last year it was snowing and freezing rain and a really horrible day to travel, but we still got pretty decent attendance. Some years it's perfect weather and attendance is down because people get busy without other outdoor activities. A day like today, with clouds and a little scattered rain, and a bit of wind, may be ideal for people to come enjoy the mostly indoor activities at the sale! |
|
|
First off, right outside this office, is the Baked Foods booth, with lots and lots... and lots of hand made pies, rolls, bread, noodles, and much more. Okay, I'm getting hungry now. |
| Next is the Quilter's Corner, where Kate Alison and Rachel Schmidt of Hesston get the items organized and ready for sale, and we find Kaye Penner of North Newton, and Lorene Kaufman of Newton working in the Vintage Linens section of the booth. |
|
|
Of course, the main attraction in this Meadowlark Building is the quilts, and here they are ready for the public to peruse. The auction starts tomorrow at 8:45am, so today is the day to plan your strategy, buy a quilt booklet, reserve your seats, and of course look at the quilts and start marking in your quilt booklet the ones you want. |
| I started by going straight to the General Auction in the Sunflower North Building to give them the glass plate piece I made to donate. And while I was there I took a bunch of pictures... |
|
| The General Auction starts tonight at 6pm with the contents of one trailer, and the remaining items will we from 8:45am through around 3pm Saturday. |
| A number of items from the Silent Auction. Bids will be accepted starting 8am tomorrow up through Noon. |
|
|
At the Plants and More Both, a wide variety of healthy plants to choose from. The gentleman in one picture, getting ready for the booth to open, is Emerson Weins of Newton. |
| The Kansas Crafts booth, getting ready to open for customers... |
|
|
Ten Thousand Villages is part of the North American network of 99 stores which leads the fair trade movement with nearly 60 years of experience providing fair wages, working capital and market for artisans in more than 30 Third World countries who would otherwise be unemployed or underemployed. For the sale, they bring a huge assortment of great products to sell. |
Time to go take some more pictures. The General Auction's just starting, and in an hour the Kansas Men's Chorus will begin their program of singing. I'll be back as soon as I can for one more update before calling it a day.
I'm back, with more food, both to eat here and to take home... Verenika with ham gravy, a sausage, and a bohne berrogi for desert for now, some cheese and apple butter and snickerdoodle cookies and kettle popcorn to take home. It'll take me a bit to process all the pictures I took, and I will only have enough time for a few of them anyway -- the rest I'll process and post in tomorrow's entries. So be patient, a few more photos about to come...
| At the Fresh Baked Cookies booth in Meadowlark, Arno Miller and his daughter Melanie of Hutchinson area look at some other customers and are about to notice I'm here and ready to buy some cookies. See the second bag from the front on the right side of the picture? Those snickerdoodles are mine now. |
|
|
Nick Moseley, old friend from when he was a student at Hesston College, where I work, sells a cap to a customer at the booth he and his family come in from Littleton, Colorado every year to set up. You've seen him before, I think I put his picture in the Live Coverage every year! |
| One of the popular Children's activities (and adults secretly love it too) is taking a thrilling ride down the big slide. |
|
|
Over in and around the Pride of Kansas Building are more activities for kids of all ages to enjoy, including the 9 hole Mini Golf, Moon Bounce, and a barrel train. |
| One indicator of how many people are here is how long the line is at the Feeding the Multitudes buffet. This year the line was really long, leading me to think we might have record attendance. Hopefully we'll hear an estimate sometime tomorrow. I got my Verenika and Sausage and Bohne Berrogi here. |
|
|
The Friday Music Program, this year featuring the Kansas Men's Chorus, started around 7pm, with a standing room only crowd. |
Well, that's it for today. My plan is to wake up super early (well, super early for me) and try to be here by 7am (after a 45 minute drive). More pictures and hopefully better commentary to come!
Good morning! I'm at home, ready to get back to the sale. I should be there in about 45 minutes. See you there!
I'm here, set up, and ready to grab some breakfast and take some more pictures. I'll be back soon! Here's a picture of the skies this morning.
| Back from breakfast, full of delicious pancakes and sausage. The breakfast every year is put on by the Buhler Mennonite Church, here we have Mary Schmidt and Renetta Kroeker taking money from Carol Peters, Marianne Froese searving up some pancakes with Bonnie in the background, and Nita Regier and Caitlin serving the sausages and eggs. |
|
|
The people mover that help people get around the fairgrounds and from building to building, such as to the Meadowlark Building where I and the quilt auction are located. |
| The Quilt auction has begun, after a few words of introduction by Rod Chrystie and some city and state fair officials, and a musical number by Penny Uhl and Janet Kennedy. Thanks to Aaron Diller for this set of pictures. |
|
The auctions are underway, and I'm working on getting the initial prices on the Quilt Gallery uploaded. They should be posted shortly.
Ran into a technical problem getting the pricing working, but it's going now, the first 35 sold quilt prices are listed, and I'll add the newest prices very shortly, then go take some more pictures.
| A few quick pictures from the Meadowlark/Quilt Auction Building and a pricing update (up to quilt 71 now), then I'll run around getting pictures from the other buildings, including the other big auction, the General Auction, and the many many priced items and food for sale. |
|
| At $3,400, Quilt #88 just brought the highest bid so far today, but there may be others going as high or higher before the day is through! This one was bought by Harold and Margaret Winsinger of Topeka. Margaret helped make this quilt. |
|
We've now had a quilt sell for $5,400 -- Quilt #110.
| Macanzie helps with the penny counting station. Last year this station took in over $31,000 in donated pennies, nickles, dimes, quarters, and other money. |
|
|
Leo Thiessen, of Grand junction, Colorado, helps Karin Shuff og Inman trace her geneology. Leo's daughter Amy, from Denver, also help with the booth. |
| Members of Hesston's Whitestone Mennonite Church KOINONIA Sunday School Class grill up some larks, I mean chickens, for sale to hungry sale goers. |
|
| At the Silent Auction, Matt Schmidt demonstrates the spinning-top game Skiffle |
|
|
Lou Gomez on Newton (left) and Elmer Nisly of Hutchinson (right) help with the MCC Information Booth. |
| In the Kansas Crafts building, Jane Ward of Kingman displayed some hand-crafted pillows, while Mary Jane Janzen of Newton and Phyllis Nickel of Gossel show the bead jewelry. |
|
|
Meanwhile, next door at the Ten Thousand Villages area, a band from Lorraine Mennonite Church starts playing some lively tunes. |
Time for another round of picture taking, but more importantly it's time for me to EAT! I haven't had anything since the pancake and sausage breakfast, too busy running around.
I do have some numbers. The Silent Auction, which ended at Noon, brought in a total of $3,388. Yesterday they served over 3000 people in the Feeding The Multitudes buffet; they used up over 2/3rds of their Verenika and Cherry Moos on Friday and ran out early today.
Okay, I'm going, and I will not come back until I've eaten!Back with food in hand, and updating quilt prices again -- they've sold almost 200 quilts so far, with two quilts in each $5,000, $4,000, $3,000, and $2,000 range, a couple dozen over $1,000 -- bringing us close to the $100,000 mark with over 25 quilts still to go.
Time to process some more pictures...
| A beautiful day, and there goes the barrel train! |
|
|
The Iron Junktion is here every year, I'm not quite sure what it's for though. It is interesting to look around all the weird rusted iron parts and try to guess what things were supposed to be used for. |
| The General Auction was in full swing when I took these photos earlier (around noon) -- and still is. |
|
|
And back to the Quilt Auction, where Kenneth King of Hutchinson and Dale Martin of Haven bring another rack of quilts up to the staging area in preparation for their turn on the autcion bed. We also see a picture of the quiltdisplay area at about the halfway point, and less than half an hour ago. |
| What? You're asking what food I did come back with? Well, food was running out all over (note to self and everyone else: eat early, not late), but I ended up with nachos (the very last one, as it happens), a box of New Years Cookies for later, and a Russian Pancake, as we see members of the Hillsboro Mennonite Brethren Church make: Glenn Wiebe, his son Jake, and Rod Hamm in the middle of a flip. |
|
|
I didn't get a picture of the New Years Cookies booth, but some other booths in the Domestic Arts building included this Caps Booth, featuring lots and lots of caps of all kinds... |
| ... and this Prysanka (Easter Egg) Decorating demonstration booth with gorgeous eggs also for sale. |
|
Both auctions are still going, but coming close to the end. Once the Quilt Auction is over, the Surplus Auction will begin at the same location. I'm guessing there will not be a lot of surplus to be auctioned off this year, given level of attendance and the numerous food items that ran out throughout the day.
I'm going to start thinking about shutting things down here, see if there were any important pictures I missed putting up, or if I can come up with any other information for you.
Okay, a few more pictures and then I'm packing up and going home and calling it a day. I'll add another entry once I receive preliminary or official sale results, probably tomorrow or Monday.
| Although the Surplus Auction hadn't started yet when I took these pictures (it has now), it's already clear there's not much there to auction off. The Quilt Auction ended up having over 40 quilts in addition to the 226 that were listed on the website, with most of them showing up as late as Monday. |
|
|
Friends and relatives complain I'm never in the photos, so for you guys here's one of me enjoying my New Years Cookies. Note that I waited until the sale was over to eat these to make sure if I keeled over from a coronary or went into a diabetic coma, it wouldn't affect the Live Coverage. |
Well, I'm home and ready to RELAX. Check back in a day or two for preliminary results, etc. so you know in black and white just how fabulous this year's sale was!
Preliminary results are now in! First, Run for Relief, which is a part of the sale every year but because it starts at an off-fairgrounds location I have been unable to include it in the Live Coverage. Thanks for Matt Schmidt for this photo and run results:
And then the official press release:
contact information:
Becky Blough
KMRS publicity chair
crblough@mtelco.net
620-345-3088
620-747-0558 (cell)
www.kansas.mccsale.org
Note: The quilts sold at this year's sale are listed on the sale website along with their bid.
Press Release
A picture perfect weekend equaled a picture perfect 40th Kansas Mennonite Relief Sale with early sale totals equaling $406,500.
"This weekend marked the 40th birthday of the Sale," said Rod Chrystie, Kansas Mennonite Relief Sale chair. "After what has seemed like a long winter, folks came out in droves to join in the festivities.
"Friday night, we were blessed to have the Kansas Mennonite Men's Chorus present a wonderful music program. And Saturday, the calm winds and bright sun welcomed every one back for a full day of eating, working, bidding and maybe a little more eating. Many thanks to all for helping us raise much needed funds that will make a difference in lives all across the world."
The quilt auction total was estimated at $113,000. There were 24 of the 200 plus quilts that sold for over $1,000. The top selling quilts were "Thelma's October Garden" by the Piece Makers, Pleasant Valley Mennonite Church, Harper, for $5,400 and "Lily Garden" by Whitestone Mennonite Church, Hesston, for $5,700.
The general auction raised $4,600 Friday night and $49,000 on Saturday with the two antique tractors raising $4,700 for the Minneapolis Moline Model U and $4,000 for the Cockshutt Series 30.
Other notable totals include:
| Silent Auction | (approx.) $3,000 | |
| Quilters' Corner | $13,700 | |
| Ten Thousand Villages | $12,500 | |
| Penny Power Collection | $19,252 | |
| 11th Run for Relief | $18,700 | |
| Feeding the Multitude (German Buffet) | $32,000 |
The 41st annual KMRS is scheduled April 17 & 18, 2009 at the Kansas State Fairgrounds, Hutchinson. For more information about this year's sale and updates on next year's sale, log on to kansas.mccsale.org.
Live coverage by David Godshall, NØLQU, kansas@mccsale.org