I will put lists of contest winners and other relevant information here as we have a chance to compile the information. There are still many boxes left to unpack.
Meanwhile, here is what we do know:
The event piece and display are pictured below. 225 were made of each. One set appeared on ebay the very next day; the selling price is not yet known, but the current bid is higher than the $200 ticket, which included a $40 goodie bag.
(Photo courtesy of Ray LaBelle.)
The display piece was created by Dorothy and Bob Sawyer. Only 225 were made, one for each purple Night Prayer event piece, and no more will be created.
The helper's piece is also pictured below. 32 were made. Two were sold in the silent auction at FTF, one for $409 and the other for $430. Both buyers indicated they would have been willing to go higher, but time ran out (luckily for them!)
There were a number of auctions: one for 12 From the Heart Pieces (money to Salvation Army), one for a blue Mole Hole piece (donated by the Mole Hole of Mt. Pleasant), one for an LTD-7 (donated by the CMT; money to be donated to help defray FTF overspending), and one for a patriotic r/w/b display piece by the Sawyers (money to be donated to the Salvation Army). We also sold tickets for a raffle Willy's original On the Web drawing (money to be donated to the Salvation Army). We will report the earnings from that raffle when we get closer to writing the checks.
If you would like to offer your account of how things went, please feel free to post them on the WFFCC board or send them to me and I'll put them here.
Date: 10/30/2001 23:41 Eastern Standard Time
From: Pamslo
Looks like someone elected me "event reporter" so here is Folktoberfest Synopsis!
Ginger and I flew into Detroit from Phoenix Thursday night. (Janean and Beth were on the same plane with us!) Landing in Detroit was an experience! Was very very windy, cold, and rainy - but no snow. Guards with machine guns in airport also gives you something to think about....and random security checks are interesting!
Our first stop was Copper Cricket in Westland not too far east from Detroit. What a wonderful store. It was full of every collectible you could imagine. I bought Brrr! to commemorate the weather! Ran into several other WFF people there.
We drove on up to Mt. Pleasant that night. It was a three hour drive and it was raining the whole time with some slushy stuff - but no snow. Ginger did a great job driving and I know it was hard for her cause wind was trying to blow us off road and rain made visibility not so great, and of course we didn't really know where we were going! LOL (Whoever invented/programmed MapQuest is a genius!).
Then we got up early Friday morning, drove back down to Lansing, went to Mole Hole Okemos and Mole Hole in Lansing. It was still cold, rainy, and windy but not quite as bad as Thursday. (For those of you who aren't in chat - I very seldom get out of SLO, California - so I had to buy a jacket for this trip! I was hoping for snow cause I've never actually seen it snow before....but everyone else was very relieved that it didn't!). At Mole Hole of
Okemos saw their store special, Double Delight, which was going to be available at Folktoberfest on Sunday. It is really really cute (of course they all are!) - light denim blue pants, pink shirt and a flower on the pocket. Chocolate bar and a lemon bar. It matches the Struggling Artist and Loves Me that they have had before. You had to buy another piece equivalent to $60 or purchase a $60 certificate in order to get piece....and you also had to
wait until Sunday and line up to try to get one!
Mole Hole of Okemos and Lansing stores were great. Met Gordon at Okemos store and Ron at Lansing store. Both were very nice....giving us directions to places...and again we ran into other WFF friends. Then we went on to Frankenmuth with a stop at Bronner's Christmas store. That was a great stop! A huge store (5 football fields in length) with all Christmas stuff and displays with animated figures very much like Small World at Disneyland. Spent
a couple of hours there. From there went on to Pinnochio's. That was also a very nice store. Lots of miniatures to go along with the mice....and again ran into other WFF friends there.
Then back to Mt. Pleasant. We didn't make registration in time....but were able to pick up our stuff later. With registration you got your event piece and display. I think there are pictures of both at WFFCC site - both very cute. Dorothy Sawyer and her husband did an outstanding job on the displays. We also all got a lap blanket with WFFCC logo on it.
There was some room hopping going on....but I don't think it compared to the room hopping at Expo....hotel set up was different and not especially easy to get around....and weren't many sellers and rooms way spread out. So I'm not even sure we got to every room that had things for sale. Ida and Joan from Madames Mice and More were there and had a room full of minis.....I spent quite some time in there!
Saturday morning Nancy BR welcomed us. She said we weren't going to be allowed to have Folktoberfest again in October because both times Michigan had unseasonably cold weather....and it was thought to be because of the heavy influx of Californians! LOL
At each table setting there was a pin for each person.....you either got a pin that had Folktoberfest 2001 with a picture of the Night Prayer piece, or one with "On the Web" picture, or one that said From the Heart with a picture of From the Heart I'm Yours on it.
Kathy Hartman from the factory gave the main presentation. She started with a slide show of the process of making WFF - from molding, drying, sanding, airbrushing, painting, tailing, etc. It was similar to a slide show that she did at Expo few years ago....but not exactly the same, and I heard things I hadn't heard before. Then she had a question/answer period....and there were lots of questions and she was very diplomatic in her answers and
wouldn't give away any secrets (like anything about new pieces coming up!). Can't even begin to remember what they all were.... Next Kathy had us do a game with questions such as what is the sewing machine wheel on Miss Bobbin, what does Beddy Bye have on foot of bed, how many Halloween pieces are in current line, etc. Total of 20 questions and two people tied for most correct. Kathy did a great job....she is a very good speaker....and very
informative.
Lunch was served in another room - Mexican food (which I found highly amusing coming from California)....but it was good.
After lunch we split into three groups for Breakout sessions.
One session was with Joyce (and Steve) Schweikert. Joyce had many of her old pieces there (including a squirrel nutsy on loan from the factory). It was first time I had seen any of the hippos. She did a slide show of many of her "other animal" pieces....with a story line along lines of Wizard of Oz with Miss Daisy trying to find the wizard and get home and stopping to ask all the different animals along the way how to do that. The presentation
was very good. Each slide with different animals was set up and then torn down by Joyce just for the slide. They were really good scenes and I can't imagine the hours of work that went into making them.
One session was Kathy Hartman with two more games to play. One was trying to give the actual name of a piece from the name the workers at the factory call it. (Examples: Button Bunny was Bunny in a Basket, Coaty was Brrr!, Cookie Mom was Sugar & Spice, Hilda was Broom Service, etc.). Second game she passed around display board with little parts of different pieces and you had to identify which piece the part belonged too....it was harder than you
would think (tiny hat from Molly's Choice, clock from frig in Midnight Snack, little bench and faucet from Pearly Whites, tiny umbrella from new Raindrops piece, etc....some of these pieces were so tiny it was hard to even figure out what they even were!).
Third session was Dorothy Sawyer giving a presentation on how to pack your mice for shipping. She had some very humorous horror stories about receiving mice (like the delivery person throwing the boxes from her driveway up to her doorway at the top of a flight of stairs!). She boxed up a mouse and then picked up the box and threw it very hard against the wall on the other side of the room...and then she went over and kicked it all around the
room....finally opening it and the mouse had survived! A very informative talk and very humerous. This was also the first time I met Dorothy outside of chat.
During course of day everyone got a doorprise - which included a lot of the new From the Heart pieces, the new Loves Me pieces, Roly Poly, the r/w/b April Showers....and some others thrown in (Wanderlust, Father's Night, Zelda, were some I remember).
Then there was a break before dinner and people set up displays, and brought Dress a Mouse contest pictures, and silent auction was set up.
There were some very wonderful displays....I think about 12 were entered. Can't remember them all....a beach scene, halloween scene with Zelda Folktoberfest door partially inside real pumpkin, a display box that was half like inside house and other half like in forest, two patriotic displays, a combination of four boxes that had different rooms in them - one a halloween party, and a cute fall basket that had Thanksgiving and Halloween pieces on it.
I don't know who did them all. The winning display was a gypsy wagon made by Lee Strobridge that looked exactly like the Gypsy Wagon on last years' brochure cover....the Halloween scene with real pumpkin also won a prize and I can't remember the third one.
The "Dress a Mouse" contest had some very cute entries. In this contest you took a mouse from the line and "redressed" it - basically just putting it in a new costume. Some people did a computerized drawing and some people hand drew them. All very cute.
I didn't pay too much attention to the silent auction cause there wasn't anything I wanted (well there were lots of things I wanted - but I couldn't afford them!) I don't recall that there were any old pieces in it - mostly specials. Silent auction had a piece of paper for each piece being auctioned (pieces were all in display cases) and owner put down starting bid they wanted. Then you could just write down your bid (and I assume your name) and
someone else could come along and put on next line a higher bid, but you could come back and bid again, etc. The final results were not announced so I don't know who got what or for what amount.
Dinner was again in another room. Food was pretty good and staff there were excellent. After dinner there was a talk by Dr. Pamela Gray (a colleague of Nancy BR's and a collector) who talked about how collecting WFF had changed us.....how we looked at money differently now, and how our reasoning process had changed! During her talk someone came around room and left an envelope and paper on each table that said DO NOT OPEN! She then said she was
going to tell a story and during the course of the story each table would have to act out the WFF piece that was named in their envelope. We all got a few minutes to open envelopes and discuss what we were going to do. My group was Little Squirt (and fortunately we actually had a little girl at our table with her mom to play that part and we didn't spill any of the water we were pouring from the fountain!). It was all very cute and each table did
a great job and all were guessed correctly by the other tables. People were very innovative coming up with props from around the room and making things with the extra pieces of paper we were given.
Saturday night there was more room hopping.....but again rooms were few and far between. There were some people selling mice in rooms and a few selling miniatures (besides Joan and Ida from Madames Mice and More, there was Lee Strobridge who had some wonderful Christmas trees with mouse angel on top and she was also selling for Karen Marklund; Jamie Millar was selling her miniatures). It was actually fairly late when dinner portion of event got
over so I didn't see a lot of people room hopping.....several of us ended up in Scotts room just talking.
Sunday morning we were up early to get breakfast and get in line for Double Delight special piece from Okemos. Of course Scott was first in line and he had a pad of paper and was writing down names. I was number 54 (and we thought we were early at 7:30!). I'm not sure how many they actually had at event to give out - I assume there were a total of 100 and I heard around 90 were done at event and I assume rest went to stores regular good customers
and employees at store. Claudia was handing out to everyone in line something to eat that looked wonderful.....but I didn't take one. Once doors opened you could go in and pick up and pay for your piece and the $60 other piece or certificate.
Then there was the swap and sell.....with tables selling WFF and accessories. The highlight was that Kathy Hartman had brought several eye wheels and actual pieces (different witches) for people to try to paint. The assignment was to paint a pumpkin on the dress and the eyes. I tried it - and couldn't get the eyes at all. I don't believe I heard Kathy tell anyone to quit their current job! LOL And of course you COULD NOT take the piece you
painted....Kathy had to take them all back to the factory (and I'm sure that they got some good laughs when they saw them!). However, if she thought you did a pretty good job she gave you one of the pins that had been on tables day before....so lots of people were painting to try to get another pin. Celeste painted two and I think Kathy gave her a pin for effort. Jamie Millar painted a piece with an entire halloween scene on it and Dorothy Sawyer
painted one with a perfect pumpkin, bat, and black cat! Two very talented ladies!
After that was lunch and drawings for raffled items. Included in raffle was the Milestone piece, a display piece made by Dorothy Sawyer in r/w/b of bedroom with red boots and hat, one of the Devil helper pieces, and I can't remember the other pieces....just know they were things I already had or had no interest in. You could buy as many raffle tickets as you wanted and then each piece had it's own jar and you put your tickets into which ever you
wanted to enter. And I don't remember the winners....wasn't me! There was a separate raffle for the original of Willy's "On the Web" with checks going to charity. Beth won the drawing. And there were other door prizes that were really great ones donated from various stores - many of them store specials.
Then is was time for goodbyes as most people headed out. It was a great weekend, saw lots of WFF people I already knew and got to met many that I've chatted with but never met, and many brand new people.
Great Job Nancy and Lorraine (and Nancy's sister, and brother, and nephew who were all helping).
Thats it....I'm sure I've left stuff out....everyone else feel free to add to this....I'm sure people had different perspectives and remember different things than I did.
Pam
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Here's the Event Piece:
And here is the Helper's Piece:
