Arts And Craft Sales Kick Off Holiday Season

The green at Saturday’s East Valley High School craft fair had nothing to do with envy.

It was the color of the balloons, the paper draped over the tables, the ornament-hung Christmas trees.

And it was the color of Wende Barker’s East Valley Knights sweatshirt.

“I’m graduating,” the mom proclaimed from behind a table of cookies and brownies. She said her “baby” was a senior, and this would be her last shift selling baked goods to benefit the school’s senior all-nighter.

“He’s not your baby,” piped up a little girl belonging to someone else. “He’s a senior.”

“He’s my baby,” Barker protested.

Moms, vendors, and bargain-hungry shoppers descended upon the EV event en masse to kick off the craft sale season. The moms were there to raise dough for their children’s last high-school bash.

Inside, they had everything.

Vendor Suzie Steiner sold long, sock-like things called Bed Buddies. And no, you can’t buy them at adult bookstores.

They were filled with rice, and heat up when microwaved. It’s kind of a bed warmer. “Dr. Recommended,” the banner read. “Heat lasts for 20 minutes.”

About every 15 minutes, someone tried to sell you an Entertainment Book.

And as for the Christmas stuff for sale in October, well, that’s how it always works during craft season. The earlier craft shoppers start thinking ahead, the better.

One lady sold mother-of-pearl jewelry and little olive wood camels and other trinkets. “People love them,” Jihan Nasri Butrous coaxed passers-by. “It’s almost Christmas, and they’re from Bethlehem.”

There were cutesy, stuffed Kermit-looking frogs dressed in Little House on the Prairie dresses.

And craft shoppers couldn’t get enough. “I collect wooden carousel horses,” proclaimed Peggy Fisher, removing the day’s prize from her sack. “That’s the only one that they had here today. But you never know. You walk around and suddenly you see something you want more than anything else.”

Other folks were dragged along for utility’s sake. “I’m just a carrier,” lamented Fisher’s daughter, Diane Hutchens. She carried a big, orange “Happy Halloween” sign slung over one shoulder.

Yes, there was spooky Halloween stuff too. They were spooky mostly because of brow-raising (as opposed to hair-raising) one-liners, like the “Tomb it may concern” inscribed wooden headstone.

Beth Wilson hawked quilted Thanksgiving pilgrim wall hangings and other stitched fare.

“My baby is a senior,” she said.

Sound familiar?

She and partner Linda Harris are hardcore crafters. They even rent a Loon Lake cabin for a week during the summer so they can sew like mad.

“We get a lot done,” Wilson said. “No kids, no husband, no television, no telephone.”

You have to hand it to those Knights moms. But even they run out of gas after the end of their grueling high school career, Barker said.

“By the end of the year, we need a party as bad as the seniors do.”

, DataTimes