Monday, September 28, 2009
Prairie Home Companion
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Gate Makers
Recent Geocaching
Cachers in Kaukauna. Charlie and Grace cache under the name IMFULR2 while the three granddaughters are IMFULR3. I'm IMFULR! Coletta had found a geocache in the woods behind her home while attending a workshop this summer. She knew what it was from our June caching session. she left it alone without looking inside. We found it together during our recent session. We're all pretty proud of her for not disturbing it and not telling her friends where it was located.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
BeatleFest 2009 - Spring Green
Below: That's Chris on the left, Connie and Erin. The drummer unfortunately can't be seen.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Saturday's Tour Around Lake Pepin
Thursday, July 16, 2009
A Full (er) Weekend
On Saturday I arose at 4:45 AM and hit the road by 5:30 AM to head for Knott’s in Cottage Grove, where Bob was staying. The Knott’s, Klimpke’s and Fullers were at the Alliant Center in Madison by 7:30 for the Roadshow…and there were hundreds and hundreds of people ahead of us. However, the lines moved fairly quickly, as all the appraisers were there early, so they started by 7:30 instead of waiting until 8 AM. The host, Mark Wallberg, came along, and when I exclaimed at seeing him, he came right over and gave me a huge hug! It was so neat!
Arrival - note Knott's poles
Relatively empty queWe saw lots of cool stuff while waiting in line, and the Knott’s were filmed and photographed by AR photographers several times in line, as they’d brought some historical Wisconsin Dells Indian totem pole-like wall-boards with lots of Indian masks on them from an old store that was torn down in the Dells 30 years ago. While the website says you can take a collection, the check-in person refused to consider my carefully chosen box of 12 rolling pins as one, so insisted I pick out one material, so I did my glass ones…but Marty cagily got an extra ticket (since she only had I item) so I could try 2 appraisers with different types, and that worked out great. Alas, I discovered at the appraisals that my rare glass ones have fallen in value, due to the miracle of eBay. Since I’d gotten them for great prices on eBay, I couldn’t complain, as I was still making a profit—I just may weed a few more of them out of my collection, though!
(Several years ago, I’d have done a lot better in values.) My boxes were more positive—my $20 estate sale box (which 8 antique dealers walked past before I snatched it up) turned out to be a Persian lap-desk that the appraiser was very enthusiastic about, while my $12 decoupage Chinese box that has really cool Victorian rooms decoupaged on the inside sent the appraiser into ecstasies—he even ran it around and showed it to several people, as he’d never seen anything like it, which really tickled me, as I haven’t either. It didn’t have a huge
monetary value, but it was so fun stumping the appraiser that it was my favorite moment of the day.
A few hundred people ahead of us
A film crew takes our picture in line...
paid for them. The appraiser gave me all sorts of hot tips on what to look for when buying that stuff, too—mostly I look for a 50 cent or $1 price tag, however. My big find there, though, was my $1.65 pin from St. Vincent DePaul, which turned out to be real gold and quartz and worth $! There ARE bargains out there. Bob took in salesman sample books from the 1800’s that he’d missed last time, but cagily added the book that was our big value at the last show… the appraiser (a different one from last time) just glanced at his really valuable
book and said it was worth significantly less this time! Maybe eBay’s affected the book market, too. We got to see some really fabulous items while we waited in line…and some that we wondered why their owners had bothered bringing them. (They’ll probably end up being on the show, alas!) We stood right by one of the Keno twins as he did an appraisal, plus watched and talked to several appraisers we’d seen on TV, so it was a really nice day. By the time we left, however, the lines were humongous, so we decided our 8 AM time was the ideal one and we’d really lucked out.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Deck Project Progress
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Confused Robin
Friday, June 5, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
BobFest 2009
Check out our pictures below from the event. There are more photos at the General Store site.
Mike performing with Redneck Victim
Our annual favorite - Everybody Must Get Stoned
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Entry project Update
Click on photos to make them larger