Call me crazy, but one of the best things about the holiday
season are the craft fairs.
Call me crazy, but one of the best things about the holiday season are the craft fairs. I mean, what better way to feel good about your home decor than spending an afternoon wandering down row after row of beaded ornaments, birdhouse key racks and ballerina bunny wall hangings?
OK, so I’m not what anyone would call a crafty sort of a person, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate craftiness when I see it. In fact there is something about being surrounded by people who use the term “decoupage” in context and who can turn aluminum cans into windmills and airplanes and crocheted hats that makes me feel, well, small and inadequate.
I think it all goes back to the time in Girl Scouts when I had to make an authentic looking log cabin out of paper mache and straws. It wouldn’t have been so upsetting except when I moved it, the roof caved in and buried my Malibu Barbie, whom I had lovingly dressed in a felt pioneer costume.
If you ask me, craft fairs bring up all sorts of mysterious issues. One of which is that peculiar things happen to people who attend them. I’m not talking about anything violent or sordid or anything like that. But how else would you explain how a normal, rational person suddenly can’t live without a heart-shaped potpourri nightlight? No one knows why this happens. Some might say it’s a side effect from the fluorescent lights. Others may contribute it to a more Zen-like experience. Me, I blame it on the fumes from the hot glue guns.
Take my friend Shauna, for example. One year, she bought dozens of animal-shaped clay toothbrush holders to give as Christmas gifts because she thought they were “cute.” She bought a pig with a bright pink snout for her Uncle Jim, a tap dancing cat for her mother-in-law, a cow dressed as a ballerina for her Aunt Kathy, a frog wearing a top hat and a tuxedo for her environmentally conscious friend Lisa. This went on and on until, one day in mid-December, she suddenly snapped back to reality and started giving out gift certificates to the mall.
Naturally everyone was a lot happier except, of course, Shauna, who’s now stuck with 38 clay toothbrush holders.
Another issue about craft fairs is that, if you stay long enough, you start thinking. And everyone knows that happens then. Before you know it one thing leads to another and suddenly you find yourself blurting out the six of the most dangerous words in the English language: I-can-make-this-cheaper-myself.
If you don’t believe me ask my friend Linda. No one knows exactly why, but one Christmas, after attending an unusually large craft fair, she came home and started making Russian nesting dolls. And she’s not even Russian. She spent hundreds of dollars on paint and various woodworking tools and ended up with several un-nestable objects that looked more like Mr. Potato Head. Her family was relieved when, the next year, she downsized to making freestanding picture frames from CD cases and then finally to beaded safety-pin light covers.
But you can’t blame her, really. Everyone has a craft fair mistake or two in their lives. For some it’s a bird nest mounted in a flowered wreath, for others it’s a metal blow torch sculpture of a reindeer on the back of Santa’s Harley. Intriguing? Sure. But mistakes none-the-less.
So why do I keep on going year after year?
I admit it, there’s something comforting about seeing all that homemade stuff. Like the crocheted afghans that look like the ones my great aunt, Mildred, used to send everyone in the family each Christmas. And the clowns made out of fabric circles that my mom used to have on the living room sofa. And descendants of my old monkey sock puppet.
No matter what you think about them, craft fairs bring back memories. That’s the reason I can’t manage to stay away.
That, and, oh yeah – the kettle corn.
Debbie Farmer’s column appears every Monday.
