Craft Show Delight

Normally, Thaddeus and I aren't very fond of craft shows. Geese-shaped pieces of wood, badly painted with heart-shaped pieces of wood hanging from their necks, just isn't our cup of tea.

A Pleasant Surprise
A friend of ours sells handmade jewelery at various craft shows throughout the year, and she asked us to come see her this past Saturday at the Prallsville Mills Annual Holiday Craft Show. We felt somewhat obliged to go, so we did.

It turns out that there were some amazingly talented folks there. Jean Walton had some of the most beautiful women's jackets, and if I had any sense about what sizes women wear, I would have bought some of her work. Knitter friend, Sandy had some gorgeous crocheted/beaded necklaces. There was a woman who had spectacular handspun yarns (bulky, loosely spun singles) that she had prepared from fleece, and dyed and spun by hand. They were a little too expensive for me to justify buying more yarn.

Thaddeus found a wonderful wood carver and painter who made some amazing shore bird decoys. We were quite impressed with his painting (he admitted to us that he uses "oops" paints...the paints that home depot mixes for for folks who don't want them), so we ended up buying this little piece of handiwork/art.



He individually carved and painted each fish, and then hung them on a leather fish line with similar hardware to what a real fisherman would use (or so Thaddeus tells me). It was amazingly inexpensive, and even if it wasn't, we were pleased to be able to hang this in our house.

It sure beats a lawn goose...no?

Current Knitting
I didn't get a whole lot more knitting done last night...my client had an annual holiday outing that they invited me to.



Since I didn't have the first knitted strip, I pasted it in using my photo editing software so you could see them all. Obviously they were taken in different places with very different lighting.