Wooden Creations Grace Green
Forget Power Ranger action figures, plastic Legos and GI Joe dolls.
How about a wooden toy truck hand-painted grassy green, bumblebee yellow and blazing red? Or a miniature train set crafted with finely chiseled pieces of wood?
“Mom, can we get a horsey?” the boy asked, fingering a small timber-carved pony at the toy booth.
Children and adults alike crowded under the Circle Wood Products canopy Saturday - one of 125 booths at the 27th annual Art on the Green crafts fair.
Amid the sweltering summer sun, thousands of people flocked to tree-shrouded Fort Sherman Park on Saturday. They came to peruse lush paintings, delicate pottery, man-sized flutes and hand-carved antlers.
As a junior high shop teacher 20 years ago, Greg Rounds of Circle Wood Products began making wooden playthings for his own children. One evening his wife held a party at a friend’s house to see if other people would like them.
“I didn’t think they’d sell,” Rounds said.
He made $100 dollars that night.
Rounds eventually quit his job and now creates wooden toys full time at a shop in Marysville, Wash. His son, 21 years old now, helps him handmake each toy. They cost between $4 and $40 each.
“There’s a certain ambience about wooden toys,” Rounds said, surrounded by his creations - a pale green worm with wheels on the bottom and a straw hat on its head, a logging truck piled with small wood sticks for logs.
“The plastic toys don’t have that warm feeling about them.”
Chelsea Boss, 8, of Coeur d’Alene, said she’d take a wooden logging truck over a Barbie doll any day.
“I think I really like these toys a lot,” she said.
So does her dad.
“Can I get one for me,” Frank Boss asked his wife.
“I like nice toys, too, you know.”
“She says it’s OK,” the Coeur d’Alene man announced in mock childish glee. “I get a toy, too.”
Between 40,000 and 50,000 people will walk through the Art on the Green, estimated Patrick Flammia, an event organizer.
Sharalin Medley of Riggins, Idaho, learned from her father how to turn antlers into artwork.
Images of eagles, elk and other wildlife emerge from within moose antlers as Medley carves.
“It’s real peaceful when I’m working,” she said as onlookers stared at her detailed carvings.
“I kind of get away from it all.”
But, the three-day event provides more than just goodies to buy.
Shoppers can drink in a variety of music and gobble up fresh corn on the cob and gigantic German sausages.
“It’s just like a big get-together,” Flammia said.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo
MEMO: Art on the Green Location: Fort Sherman Park, Coeur d’Alene, west off of Northwest Boulevard. Time: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission: Free