Off to the Races!

We were invited to go with my husband’s family to a local Catholic school auction fundraiser this last Saturday. It’s a pretty big deal and they go all out for it. The theme was ‘Off to the Races’, as in, the horse races.

You don’t have to dress up with the theme, but where’s the fun if you don’t?

When I think of horse racing I think of the Kentucky Derby, where I’ve seen (in pictures and on TV) the ladies dress up in fancy hats and outfits, and the guys wear bowties. For us ladies, my sister-in-law and I went to my mother’s house where she graciously allowed us to choose from her many hats. We chose a couple of hats and one for her friend that was also going to be there. We had a lot of fun, almost like playing dress-up just choosing them.

That was the easy part. Now for the bowties. My mother had one bow tie, a clip-on, that my husband wore, but I needed four more (I volunteered). I had hoped that it being prom season there would be someplace local that would have inexpensive (cheap) bowties, but I couldn’t find any place at all that carried any bow ties. My next choice was to make some. I checked out Pinterest and found a few places that had patterns and ideas, so it was off to the store for some material and the findings I’d need.

I chose to get materials in black and white with a mix of small patterns. I know I can use leftovers for other things, at some point. I had a list of items I thought I needed, so that was quick. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized I was getting too complicated. I’d be lucky if the guys would put them on in the first place, let alone wear them the entire evening. I ended up just folding the material, ironing it to shape, and hand stitching a few stitches to hold them together.

I didn’t find any of the clips to hold them to the collars so I used black strips of material with velcro on the ends. I ironed interfacing to the material and folded the edges in. By the time Saturday came around and I needed to finish them, I realized the band around the neck would be hidden so they didn’t have to be that finished. I think they came out very well.

My husband’s brother came to the dinner in a Hawaiin shirt, shorts, and sandals but he let me help him put on one of the ties. He wore it all night! My husband was the only one of the five guys at our table who even tried to dress up for the theme, but all of them wore the bow ties all night. I was very surprised – and pleased. They didn’t even put up much of a fight, LOL.

There were some people, men and women, that really got into dressing up. There were others, like us, that kind of dressed up, and a few that didn’t. It was a lot of fun watching the crowd.

The school has done fundraising auctions every year for years, with a different theme each year. This is the first time my husband and I have gone. The school had both a silent auction, which was online before dinner and a live auction after dinner. I won several items in the silent auction I didn’t expect to. We didn’t even try to win anything in the live auction, the items were bid up pretty high pretty fast. It was fun to watch, though.

Besides making the bow ties for the dinner this last week was very busy, with no time to tat. The grandkids have had several track meets each and I’ve helped at my mom’s house. I’m hoping this week is a bit quieter.

We’ve also had some severe weather close by in the last few days. Friday was the first time I’d ever gotten a dust storm warning. When the cold front came through there was a dramatic drop in temperature and with it came the dust. Down the road visibility dropped to zero due to dust.

The camera cleaned up this picture a bit, it was much worse than it shows. If you were outside it immediately became harder to breathe. The front carried this dust a long way. We didn’t have a tornado, but you may have heard that the town of Anderdover was hit by one the same day we had the dust storm. That is south of us, and just east of my daughter’s house. The threat of severe weather was close enough that we stayed ready to head for the storm shelter all evening but the wind and the dust were the worst we experienced that night.

We have threats of severe weather again tonight. For the next several hours we’ll be watching the weather, ready for whatever comes – or doesn’t. But what should I expect, I live in Kansas and it’s spring.

Thank you to everyone that expressed their condolences about my family. It is greatly appreciated.

“To its devotees the bowtie suggests iconoclasm of an Old World sort, a fusty adherence to a contrarian point of view. The bowtie hints at intellectualism, real or feigned, and sometimes suggests technical acumen, perhaps because it is so hard to tie. BowTies are worn by magicians, country doctors, lawyers and professors and by people hoping to look like the above. But perhaps most of all, wearing a bow tie is a way of broadcasting an aggressive lack of concern for what other people think.” Warren St. John