Sewing circle auction

It has been an interesting weekend. My mother had booked a huge number of activities for my visit, and it was exhausting. On Saturday we started at nine by going to one of the second-hand stores in Åhus. We bought a small desk for John (my nephew). It was problematic to get it into my mother's car, but we managed. We drove (carefully) to my aunt's place and put it in her storage room. Someone will have to bring it to Borås later. From there we went to Kristianstad to look at even more flea market stores, and we bought curtains and some decorative items. Lunch at a café; seafood pie. Very tasty. At about two o'clock we picked up a friend of my mother's and drove back to Åhus to go to the Christmas market. We managed to get some Christmas presents there. Since my sister reads this, I can't tell you what it was!

After two hours at the market, we were tired, and drove back to town. Dropped my mother's friend off, and returned to my aunt's place, this time to actually visit her. We had sandwiches there. At six, we drove a very short distance to the parish hall next to the church. The local church sewing circle had arranged their annual auction and bake sale. It's going to be difficult to explain this, but I will try. Imagine 70 women and 20 men past normal retirement age, eagerly awaiting the raffle tickets and the homebaked loaves of bread and the jam to be sold by an auctioneer pushing 90. He was hard of hearing, and the old ladies got upset when they missed out on the decorative items/basket of apples/candles/knitted mittens. It was the first time in many years I had attended such an event, and the flashbacks were numerous. During the 1980s my grandmother brought me to some, but very few sewing circles exist these days, and even fewer have auctions. On the way home, after having purchased jam and bread and won a candle arrangement, my mother said that it had brought back memories also from her childhood. It's a tradition rarely seen today, a remnant of old times, when the parishioners gathered funds for the local poor children's education and clothes. Nowadays, the money is sent abroad to children who don't have the privilege of living in a wealthy country.

The next day, Sunday, it was very difficult to get out of bed. We were pretty tired. Basically, we only managed to go for lunch at Furuboda and then in the evening my mother cut my hair.

Yesterday, Monday, was also busy. At eleven, I had an appointment with a librarian in Kristianstad. We are going to have a Leroy Anderson exhibit there, so we had a few things to discuss. After lunch, my mother and I went to even more flea market stores (three, to be exact). It's unbelievable how many places like that there are. I found ornaments for my Christmas tree. At five, there was another Leroy Anderson meeting at the city administration building, and then I took the train back home to Kävlinge.