Alice: I’m sorry I interrupted your birthday party.

March Hare: Why my dear child this is not a birthday party.

Mad Hatter: Heavens no. This is an unbirthday party.

An appropriate quote from my granddaughter’s favorite book. (She told me she has read it hundreds of times!) Her birthday is the week before Christmas ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù not the most advantageous time for a birthday party. So, today, she had a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù a very unbirthday party with presents and candles.

Here is “Alice” excitedly waiting for her guests.

Steph’s friend, Alicia, found these wonderful vintage Alice In Wonderland figures for Mia. They are for decorating a cake, but since we had cupcakes, Steph made this delightful centerpiece.

I went over early and made tea sandwiches in the shape of flowers and frosted cupcakes. Mia and I set the table, using my bone china tea cups that once belonged to my mother.

She made a sign for the front porch to welcome everyone.

One of the activities involved painting teacups. Notice the mad hatter (AKA Miles) is really getting in to it!

I love this shot of the two Alice’s:

Here are the Eat Me cupcakes, enjoyed by all:

A good time was had by all. And this sentence was not uttered by anyone.

Of all the silly nonsense, this is the stupidest tea party I’ve ever been to in all my life.

What is normal winter weather in Portland? Everyone keeps saying it is rainier, colder and now snowier than normal.

This morning around 8:30, this is what I saw. Big fluffy flakes of snow were starting to fall.

Not much later, it looked like this:

Then the snow stopped and the sun came out.

If you would like to see a selection of all my snowy day pictures, you can find them here.

Update on my art quilt for the auction. The winning bidder is Melissa from Minnesota. She is a knitter and a software tester for Adobe. She reads the crafty blogs and saw a link to the auction and my quilt and fell in love with it. I hope she likes it as much when it is in her hands.

While perusing the blogs that she linked to, I saw some negative comments about the auction. There were those who thought the fundraising was not necessary for someone who lives in San Francisco and probably had life insurance and other means. I think they missed the point ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù that this was a way for artists to share their grief with Kati who has been a wonderful supporter of emerging artists in the Bay area. We would all like to see her continue to keep the two stores open and if this money can help her do that, it is well worth the effort. But the fact is, we don’t care how she uses the money. No amount of money will ever bring James back to them and for that, we still grieve.

I have been trying to finish organizing and doing some cleaning up in the studio so that I can take pictures to put up here. I finally succeeded today so sometime in the next few days, I will have a studio tour on the blog.

I have also been organizing photos of my quilts for my website. I have to do a description, size, etc and then put them into folders for my galleries. So far, I have finished the abstract/geometric section which has been sent off to the design team. I should have gotten another set done today, but I am happy that I got the studio done.

Tuesday night was STASH meeting at Beth’s house. I love spending time with this group of women. Three of the six of us were knitting as we shared and chatted. We are moving our meetings to Some Thursday at Somebody’s House – in the day time. I am excited because I don’t enjoy going out in the evening that much unless it is a date with Mr C. We can also go out for lunch and have some field trips.

Tomorrow is critique group at Terry’s house. I haven’t decided what to take. I would like to take my latest piece, but June is one of the jurors for the show so I think that would not be a good idea. We have a watercolor artist joining us tomorrow. I think it will be fun to have an artist from another media.

Yesterday, Gabrielle talked about being able to play and create like a child and less wrapped up in the responsibilities of being a grown-up. In response, I said:

I am going to the studio to play with youthful abandon, but first I
have to clean up from the last project!! I guess there has to be a
happy, healthy medium. Good thoughts.

She e-mailed this to me and made my day:

Gerrie,
You are the poster woman for what I was trying to say. Your youthful joy at all you do always brings a smile. After having lived in one place, you just pick up and move…and immediately explore the new city and all it has to offer. You’re my kinda woman…

Cheers!
Gabrielle

Enought this and that for tonight.

The girls and I are all smiles tonight. It looks as if the auction will net over $17,000. I want to say big thank yous to:

• my daughters for taking an idea I had and organizing and running a great auction. They gracefully survived a major bump in the road at the beginning.
• the artists who generously contributed their work and the shipping costs (in most cases).
• the buyers who were extremely generous in their bidding, making this auction an overwhelming success.
• the friends who donated money to the cause to help defray the E-bay and PayPal fees. You rock!!
• blogging friends who cheered us on and gave us hope. You rock, too.

I couldn’t get back in the studio today, so I putzed around upstairs and accomplished very little other than working on the auction numbers. It was very exciting early this afternoon when I realized that we had enough donations to cover our extra costs. The person who is paying $760 for my little aspen quilt has not paid yet, so I do not know who it is or where it is going.

Mr C has finished installing my new energy efficient sliding glass door and we can already feel a difference. I have better light, too, because I had sheets of styrofoam up against the door to try to keep the cold air out. I should have taken a before picture ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù it was not pretty.

I am going to try very hard to have something artsy to show you tomorrow.

First, let me say that Lisa, Steph and I are ecstatic, to put it mildly. As of 5:16 pm PST, with 3 hours and 41 minutes to go, the grand total of bids is $15,523.80. A couple of people have been haggling over Kristin’s and my quilts. One of them is Dorothea, who owns a quilt shop in Germany. She has been outbid many times and keeps coming back. I know she is sound asleep in Germany now and doesn’t know that some one has bid $910 for Kristin’s quilt. Mine is currently $760. What a hoot it has been to watch this bidding.

We want to give the full amount of the monies realized from the auction to the Kim Family. We thought we would make about $5000 and were going to pay the e-bay and paypal fees ourselves. Now that the amount is so huge, we are offering the opportunity to others, like us who can’t afford to bid on anything, to contribute a small amount to help us pay the fees. You can go here to do that. And thank you!!

I have been shut out of my studio for two days. Mr C is installing a new energy efficient sliding glass door and we had to turn off the heat. So, what to do? Knit!! I finished a hat for Milo with the yarn leftover from the sweater I knitted. I ran out and used the green for the top and the corkscrews. Here is Maggie modeling it:

I went to a yarn store in my hood: Abundant Yarn & Dyeworks. I bought the gray tweed yarn to knit a hat for Mr C. He needs one that will cover his ears. The pink/purple/green tweed yarn is for a vest for Miss Mia.

I had a great time this morning. My former hairdresser, Cynthia was in town for the week-end, and I met her for breakfast. We talked and talked and got caught up on our respective lives. She says I need some highlights, but otherwise the hair color is good. I had Northwest Eggs Benedict – it had smoke salmon and was delish. I haven’t had to eat again, I was so full.

Three more hours to bid!! Or you can help us with those pesky fees. All in all, this has been a very positive experience. I’ll report on the final totals tomorrow.

The saying goes, “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread”. But in this case, I think my angels rushed in with the best of intentions and were made to feel like fools by E-bay management.

For those who don’t know what I am talking about, Lisa and Stephanie made some errors in their E-bay auction postings. They provided links to the artists whose work was being sold and this is apparently verboten. Once the problem was discovered and the bidding had started, the posts could not be amended and had to be taken down.

The good news is that, after a day of research and discussions with E-bay, the Kim Family Auction will be back in business tomorrow morning. A representative from E-bay is helping them and will make sure every thing is up to E-bay snuff. I guess we can feel some sense of security in that E-bay does run a tight ship!! We just hope that all of our generous bidders will be back to play again!! Keep checking the above link for the latest news. The angels are working on putting the links back on E-Bay tonight. The auction will still end on Sunday.