ABCD: Charity Booth Craft Sale - Donations Welcome! on Cascade Hall

Mab

August 29, 2020 8:55 AM

ABCD: Charity Booth Craft Sale - Donations Welcome! by Mab

It was spring term and the fair was coming up. Mab's ABCD booth had collected a reasonable collection of other students to help her out, which she was both mildly surprised by and bolstered by. Alexander, of course, was supporting her, and that did not surprise her because they were not only friends but siblings now. And while Bel had no need for ABCD's services, she thought Alexander maybe also had a stake in the charity because they helped foster kids who were not as lucky as they were to get a rich foster mom who seemed determined to be there for the long haul.

Sadie and Janis, though, were not from Boston, and as best as she could tell, were not from families that needed something like ABCD to get by, and neither knew Mab particularly well so it had to be the booth itself that had drawn them. That was encouraging. If they were willing to volunteer, she hoped it meant even more people would be willing to donate once it came time for the fair itself.

She put her sign up announcing their purpose at the same part of the Pecari table where the previous meetings had been held. At this point it was mostly to ward off those not involved rather to attract new people to join them, but if anyone new came she would gladly welcome their help. The sign was a different one to the what they'd used in their first meeting, when they hadn't yet known what they were doing, but now that they knew they were having a craft sale, she was trying to elicit some early donations that were not as monetary in nature as what they expected to collect during the fair.

ABCD: Charity Booth Craft Sale
Donations of Handmade Goods Accepted
All Proceeds Go to Help Fight Poverty
All are Welcome to Help Us Make Things

She'd also put up a sign next to the Art room in MARS inviting people to find her here on Sunday afternoons if they wanted to offer anything they made to benefit charity. This had been accompanied by a pamphlet from ABCD so they'd know about what they could be helping out.

She already had a growing pile in her dorm (so far Leonor had not complained) of things they had already made or collected during previous meetings, and this meeting would be more of growing their inventory. She had brought piles of yarn for knitting and crocheting, thick high quality paper and pencils (both normal pencils and colored pencils) and markers and watercolors for people to draw and paint on, and otherwise looked like she had gotten confused that this might be the Art Room instead of the Cascade Hall, but she wanted the visibility of the Hall, so they were just going to have to made do with the supplies she could carry and the others chose to bring with them.

Once her core group had assembled, and were all working on their various projects (Mab had taught herself to crochet for this and was working on a large blue and purple blanket that was now almost halfway done and might get finished in another three meetings or so and would be one of the ones they used for the blanket maze), she began informally, "If we keep up like we've been doing, I think we're doing pretty good in terms of things to sell. Does anyone have any thoughts on actually attending the booth? Should we do it in pairs? Or do you think one person at a time can handle it? Shifts would be longer with pairs, but you'd have help. Shifts would be shorter if we do them alone, but it could get overwhelming if a lot of people are trying to buy things and ask questions about the charity and get lost in the maze all at the same time."

1 Mab ABCD: Charity Booth Craft Sale - Donations Welcome! 1473 1 5

Sadie-Lake Chalmers

August 30, 2020 3:16 AM

Easy as 123 by Sadie-Lake Chalmers

Sadie was a little bit worried about the direction the booth for ABCD had taken. This, perhaps, did not say much about the booth itself and more about her general tendencies. She had not voiced any negative reactions to Mab's idea of a craft sale, after all it was Mab's booth and Sadie didn't have any better suggestions. She had been worried about what they would do if no-one donated. She suspected the answer to that was they worked their own home crocheted little socks off, and therein lay the problem. Sadie was not sure she could contribute anything. Sure, they sometimes did #crafternoon for #familytime at home but that was most often from easily assembled kits, or jumping on whatever was trending. Some of her artwork had featured under #OneForTheFridge but that was her family celebrating her wobbly childhood scribbles. That was very different to expecting people to pay money for something she had made.

She had tried, for a couple of meetings, to take a leaf out of Mab's book and crochet. She hoped Mab didn't mind being copied, but it seemed like the more they had the better, and crochet was something that was considered good enough. Or at least, it was going to be when Mab did it. Sadie struggled along, slowly producing a couple of rows with fairly uneven stitching before concluding that the most she was likely to produce before the fair was a mouse scarf, and that it would probably be ugly to boot. Whilst she took delight in making weird and ugly things in transfiguration, that wasn't really what they were going for here. She felt sort of ridiculous, given that her whole life revolved around producing aesthetic things, that now that actual skillset was being called upon, she had nothing. Still, it was different at home. At home, it was more about creating a beautiful image - something two dimensional and posed that didn't have to last beyond the shutter click.

Still, one lesson that her Insta roots had taught her was that #SimpleButEffective was the best hack given that she was outside her comfort zone. Of course, the worry with that was why people would pay money for something they could make themselves, but... well, the other option was producing a pile of crap. Without Pinterest to hand, she had been forced to trawl her own brain for actual ideas instead, working through things she'd done or seen before, thinking about the materials she had available here. She had remembered making things with pressed flowers, and actually enjoying that project. They had been given a little flower press by some crafting company. She remembered the quaint, old-fashioned prettiness of it. The swirling stencilled letters on the top and the thickness of the wood. She remembered how the butterfly screw thingies felt between her fingers, and having to twirl them down super tight, until they cut into the wood below. She had liked the weightiness of it, how real and solid it felt in her hands, and how all this heaviness produced paper-thin flowers that you had to take care not to tear. That was like... opposites, and cool and stuff because of it.

She actually thought she might be able to do something pretty with dried flowers, so she had written home for the flower press. Her mom kept most of the things they got sent in case they wanted to reuse them, and most of it was stored pretty carefully. It was more a case of whether she had time to find it, and was willing to deal with the owl post. Sadie didn't remain totally cut off at school. She got postcards and care packages, but she was pretty sure that dealing with the wizard mail was not her mom's favourite thing. In the meantime, she remembered that she had read online about using big books to press flowers (not a fact her mom had promoted, seeing as she was doing product placement for an actual flower press) so had gone out gathering flowers in the garden (carefully checking first with Professor Xavier about what she was allowed to pick) and had put her school textbooks to use. The fact that she might have been able to look up a drying spell in one of those had not occurred to her.

She took her seat at the ABCD table, offering a quiet 'hello' and a shy smile to the other volunteers. She unpackaged her flowers carefully. She figured she might make them into bookmarks. Those were nice, and most people used them. Plus it would only take a few flowers to decorate each one, so maybe she could make up for being kind of late with her idea, and for the fact they wouldn't be able to sell them for much, by making in volume. She had sorted the flowers into colour groups and was sifting through the craft materials when Mab spoke up.

"I don't mind doing extra work at the booth," she offered. She hadn't done much else after all, and so hopefully that would be a way of making up for it. Not that that necessarily meant she would do a good job. She hadn't been too worried about that, seeing as it just involved taking money, and her maths was good enough to work that out because like... money math was what you taught little kids, but then Mab was suggesting that people might ask questions or all come in a rush, and her vision of herself as a calm and collected shop keeper disintegrated to be replaced with utter chaos, and her in the middle failing to handle it. "I mean, either with other people or on my own. Both are good options," she hedged, not really wanting to pick a side. "I just mean I don't mind doing extra to help out on the day," she clarified, her eyes roving over the craft projects on the table, her feelings about her own contributions so far becoming apparent as her cheeks turned slightly pink.

13 Sadie-Lake Chalmers Easy as 123 1480 0 5

Sylvia Mordue

September 01, 2020 5:36 AM

No, /you're/ welcome by Sylvia Mordue

Sylvia’s booth at the charity fair was proving slightly more complex than she had imagined. She had, quite quickly and easily, come up with the notion that handicrafts would be the best idea. They all had talents, after all, and it would look suitably classy to sell things made by the Gardenia Girls. They could even make it thematic - the charity was houses and gardens, which were wonderful subjects for projects. Unfortunately, someone else had an idea which, on paper, sounded very similar. That someone else was raising for people who went around having more children than they could afford and then complaining about it. Which, if you put it that way, sounded bad and surely no one could have any sympathy with it, but they undoubtedly presented themselves as starving orphans. Competing with tragic, starving orphans was not a not a good look.

Her own stall was, naturally, going to be a more high class affair. She had also concluded that she could present it as an art sale in order to differentiate, and just apply a very broad definition to that term, one which covered Katerina’s embroideries and any decorative homewares they made too. The tragic orphans could actually be an advantage, if she played it right. The fair itself was after the head student vote, which meant she needed to find ways to remind everyone that she was running a booth, and was a generous and charity-minded individual. She had decided against seeking wide-ranging donations, both because it looked more directly like she was competing, and because she didn’t actually want art from just anyone, though there was probably no way to express that without putting off some of her potential voters. Therefore, she was limiting her own stall’s contents to things made by her and her volunteers, and would have to find other ways to remind people of its existence before it happened.

One simple step had been placing meeting notices in all the common rooms, stating when their next planning meeting would be and that anyone was welcome to join (even if she largely hoped they didn’t). She had made sure that her own name was prominent on the poster as the booth’s organiser. She also had donations for the tragic orphans. She hadn’t even cheated and ordered, well aware that an obvious owl parcel could be her undoing. She had actually made the little felt finger puppets herself. Really, they were pretty simple. She had learnt to do such things when she had been a child. But the theme of their stall was children and childish things, so it fitted well.

As far as she knew, no one on the ABCD stall was old enough to vote, but she had run a few other errands around the school first, dropping her books at the library and so on, to maximise the chances that other people who did count would see her out and about being kind and generous. She hoped that most of the people who had made it to sixth year were capable of putting together the fact that they saw her with the finger puppets with the fact that there was a donation drive today. She didn’t have complete faith there, but labelling it ‘ABCD’ had seemed redundant, and might lead people to conclude that she was being conspicuous about her do-gooding. Just because that was true didn’t mean she wanted them to realise.

She made her way into the hall, hopeful that there were one or two potential voters at least in the general vicinity.

“I made you these,” she smiled graciously, depositing the basket on the centre of Mab’s table with a smile. “Good luck with your booth.”

13 Sylvia Mordue No, /you're/ welcome 1413 0 5

Alexander Pierce-Beales

September 01, 2020 9:41 AM

That's not how the song goes. by Alexander Pierce-Beales

Alexander was a big fan of Mab's booth and possibly a bigger fan of the method of fundraising. He had contributed a number of drawings already, and was working on more while he sat with his foster sister. He wasn't sure whether she really needed company for this part as it seemed like a bit of a drop-in, but he would rather be with her than with basically anyone else at school. That fact made his answer to her question easier.

He looked up from the piece he was working on and cocked his head, listening to Sadie as she went first. "Pairs sounds better to me," he said plainly, shrugging before he returned to his work. He knew Mab would understand. Or at least he hoped she would. He didn't want to do this thing alone and he would really rather be paired with her than anyone, although he knew that was likely not to be the only person he was paired with. He hated to think of anyone - mostly himself, but others too - getting stuck working at the booth when someone they didn't get along with came up and they had no buffer. Or the opposite, he supposed; if someone came up that they were good friends with, they could be distracted. The buddy system was a luxury he hadn't had most of his life, and he wanted to make sure he utilised it as much as possible now that he did.

Sylvia walked up and deposited a basket of things and this drew Alexander's attention again. He craned his neck to see what she'd left, but couldn't quite tell from his seat and he wasn't interested enough to try. It wasn't that he didn't care about these things, but that he mostly cared about Mab. His interest in ABCD was tangential to his interest in his friendship with Mab. Plus, he had a pencil in his hand, so it seemed alright. He'd been working on some stylized images of each of the House symbols, as well as the school symbol. The idea had crossed his mind to make caricatures of the staff members but he decided that might be too big a risk. It was hard to imagine anyone would actually want to pay for his art anyway, but especially if he was also vaguely insulting their professors and staff.

His attention to the table did make him take greater note of the flowers that Sadie had put down though; he'd not really caught them the first time, and he did a double take. "Those are beautiful," he told her, mouth opening a little in surprise. When he'd been in his group home, he'd often pressed things in books or hung them upside down to dry in order to preserve them, but these were done much more beautifully than that. Or perhaps they were done with more beautiful flowers than he'd previously had access to. "Really well done," he told her appreciatively.

22 Alexander Pierce-Beales That's not how the song goes. 1475 0 5

Valentine Duell

September 03, 2020 3:38 PM

Maybe she's making a new song? by Valentine Duell

Valentine was a little behind schedule, so she arrived at the ABCD table as one of the much older girls was wandering away after dropping something off. She smiled, that was nice of her. A quick glance revealed a bunch of cute finger puppets! Those were great!

She had decided to help out with this one for a number of reasons. Most of them were already sitting at the table. The charity's cause was a good one, and one of the reasons.. but almost all of the charity causes were good ones, and she was only allowed to help with three. This one had the added bonus of letting her hang out with some of the older cool kids. Sadie and Alexander were here and Mab was leading it!

She hadn't gotten a chance to talk with Mab a lot yet. Mab seemed like one of those 'quiet type' people. So she may have some work ahead of her, and she figured this was as good a place as any to start. She worked her way around the table to find a place to set up her sewing kit and materials.

She didn't make it very far before she spotted Sadie's flowers. They were beautiful! She marveled for a moment as Sadie worked with them. "Those look great Sadie!" She told the girl with a bright smile, "I may need to buy some at the fair."

Alexander was doing some fancy drawings when she found an open seat near Mab. She smiled at him and began to arrange her things.

"Hi!" She greeted Mab, "Do you mind if I join?" Valentine pulled a small rag doll, Suzanne, from her kit to show Mab. "I had to make friends the hard way growing up." She said with just the hint of a giggle, "I thought I could make some more if you wanted them."

Sitting down, she was just getting to work, when Mab asked her question about working the booth. Valentine was a little confused by the question, why would anyone choose to be alone? The others spoke up and seemed to agree. So she nodded along, "I think partners makes the most sense."

2 Valentine Duell Maybe she's making a new song? 1490 0 5

Mab

September 12, 2020 7:33 PM

She may not be a lyrical fey by Mab

"Not at all," Mab promised when a first year came up to the table and asked if Mab minded if she joined. She was Valentine, a Teppenpaw. Mab had picked her out in class as one who talked to a lot of different people indiscriminately. Valentine wasn't at the top of the list of people Mab avoided sitting next to, but she was on it. But this was different. This was for ABCD, so she nodded at the chair the girl had come up to and scooted her own over slightly to make it easier for the younger girl to sit down it in.

At first she didn't understand what the girl meant by 'making friends the hard way' but then the penny dropped, and Mab's eyes widened slightly and she said, "Oh." Then she nodded and agreed, "If you'd like to donate some directly to ABCD, I'm sure some of the kids they help would like a friend like that, too."

After asking her question, Mab nodded as Sadie waffled between the two options as much as Mab had, and mentally tagged her as in favor of either way of staffing the table. Alexander put in his vote for pairs, which she'd more or less expected. She was pretty sure he'd joined the booth primarily to support her and be siblings together, and doing the booth alone wasn't really conducive to sibling time together. She nodded again, and mentally tallied Alexander under only pairs, giving that option a one vote advantage. Even less surprisingly than Alexander, Valentine echoed this opinion. That was four in favor, none against, so "Motion passes. Pairs it is."

"Thank you," Mab replied to the older girl who stopped by to drop off a donation, even managing a polite smile to go along with it. While she did very much appreciate the donated crafts, and the wish for good luck, she always hoped there weren't any fey strings attached when unaffiliated people swung by, and tried not to look too grateful for the donations, so nobody would read her as having incurred any debt beyond an expression of gratitude. This was clearly labeled as 'charity' and no implicit deals or bargains were being offered or paid in return for gifts or well wishes. "Good luck with yours as well," she added, having recognized the girl as being the one running a booth about historical places. That ought to refute any obligations for the luck granted to her.

As the older girl walked away, Mab picked up the temporarily dropped group discussion, "Is anyone else in other booths that we'd need to coordinate your time with? I'm also in the Boston Cultural Center one."

1 Mab She may not be a lyrical fey 1473 0 5

Alexander Pierce-Beales

September 14, 2020 12:25 PM

I don't really know what she is, to be honest. by Alexander Pierce-Beales

Valentine was here and Alexander didn't have any thoughts about that, no he did not. But she did make some pretty cool little dolls, so he had a good reason to look over that way, even after she was done smiling at him. Her comment about being friends with dolls - making friends - made Alexander feel sort of squirmy inside and he wasn't sure exactly what to call that feeling. Mab responded with something that made a lot of sense and was nice which was good because Alexander immediately followed up with his own comment:"I'll be your friend." The words came out very fast and he glanced from Valentine to Mab before returning to his drawing. Comic books were much safer.

The vote for pairs or not was nice because Alexander wanted to staff the booth with Mab, but Valentine also wanted to be in pairs and he was pretty sure he could staff the booth the whole time, so that was good. She needed a friend and he could be one. He didn't say anything but he almost smiled behind his sketchbook.

Alexander shook his head quietly at the question about being in other booths. He probably should have signed up for more but he hadn't. He'd sort of forgotten that Mab had signed up for other ones so he wouldn't get to just spend the whole time with her, either. He wrinkled his nose. "This is the only booth I'm in," he said, brightening some at the thought that that meant he could staff the booth and hang out with both Mab and Val over the course of things. "I can take more than one shift if there aren't enough of us or if that is easier," he added, doing some quick mental math to decide whether that might be necessary. He wasn't sure whether he hoped it was or not, as he was sincerely hoping to find a good place to sit and sketch the event too.

22 Alexander Pierce-Beales I don't really know what she is, to be honest. 1475 0 5