Kindergarten bazaar

Well, the kindergarten bazaar went off with a bang! It was a beautiful fall day and everyone had a good time. Many, many former students and their parents and it took some doing on my part to pull names out of the back of my head. (Well, I've been at this kindergarten for 20 years!) When I absolutely couldn't, it was a good chance to ask,

"What's your name? How old are you now?" and put the kids on the spot!

Our Tree Quilt was the grand prize in the raffle again this year but I must admit that the kindergarten mother's group had a beautiful quilt to raffle too. There were years when our patchwork group (for the bazaar quilt we label our quilts "Crazy Lady Quilters") completely controlled the raffle. When that became too much work for us, we offered to make the quilt if the kindergarten mothers would run the raffle. And then a mothers' group started doing patchwork too and making scads and scads of things to raffle off as well as a wall hanging size quilt. I hope I'm not being too snooty in claiming that those first couple years we could condecendingly comment that the mothers had made a great try... But the last couple of years I've wondered if our quilt would get demoted to second prize. The mothers' patchwork group's quilt quality is soaring!

I loved all the colors the mothers' group used this year! Mrs. Furui and I made the observation that we need to use more color in next year's quilt!

Lots of food being sold at the bazaar. Sticky rice, pounded rice balls, Chinese steamed buns, curry rice, fried noodles, oden (simmered vegetables and fish cakes) pop corn, cotton candy etc.

A free market of sorts where I bought ANOTHER kimono that no one was interested in. They are SOO beautiful and it seems such a shame to throw the old kimonos out. I bought fresh vegetables, hand made baskets, and raffle tickets.

When I finished browsing stalls I ended up in the make-it-yourself section of the bazaar where children were making things with shrinking plastic and felt.


Knowing that I am handy with a needle I was given the job of sewing felt balls that the children were making onto cords or elastic for necklaces and hair ties. I had a great time in this corner having a chance to chat with mothers while I sewed felt balls.


The bazaar is over and now the kindergarten will concentrate on Christmas. Mrs. Furui and I are putting our heads together to decide next year's quilt pattern. I didn't win the bazaar quilt this year again but it went to a very happy little girl in the oldest kindergarten class.

(Yesterday's pictures from Mrs. Ochiai.)