2026, Art, Business, Gatherings, Uncategorized

A Crafty Friday

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Crafts shows are a favorite of mine.  I love to see all the stuff that people make and it’s fascinating that other people buy all this stuff.  The Arts & Crafts show at Canterbury is huge – not normally my favorite kind of craft event, but I’m fond one particular vendor so I wait in line, cough up my cash (I get two discounts – one for being old and one for getting a coupon ahead of time).   

The lines are pretty intense so I get their pretty early.  It’s good people-watching in line.

The vendor I like make quilted objects – I met the mother/daughter duo years ago at the State Fair.  I ordered some oven mitts from them and the entry fee to the fair is cheaper than the shipping that’s why I went this year.  I also wanted to check out their inventory of a couple of other items because they are closing their business at the end of the year.  Marie is 84 and ready to retire!  I got my mitts and some toilet tank toppers and a couple of table runners since it’s the last time I’ll be seeing them.  They gave me the last two popcorn bags for free, since YA and I adore those. 

Of course, as long as I’m there, I wander through and look at everything.  This year I ended up getting a couple of dip mixes – they tasted good sampled w/ pretzels.  I also stopped and got some fudge from a vendor I’ve purchased from before.  The Turtle Sundae fudge is very good.  Tried the baked cheese guys this year (won’t do that again).  AND, I got a massive bag to popcorn… a combo of kettle corn and caramel corn.  Normally I don’t get popcorn like that but from where I was standing in line (for almost an hour), the popcorn stand was directly in my line of sight and when they let us in, I was just pulled right to the stand.  Took me six days to finish it.

Without Marie and Stanna, I won’t be going back to this Arts Fair.  Not enough vendors that I’m that interested in.  I’ll still do my Rubber Stamp event in July though and if they have a popcorn vendor, I’ll be all in!

Any arts/crafts events you’ve taken part in?  Any vendors you gravitate to?

35 thoughts on “A Crafty Friday”

  1. I sometimes helped out at the booth of Winona friends Bernadette and Walken, when they would come up to the cities with their glasswork (her jewelry, his dishes). I remember the St. Kate’s Art Fair, one in SW Mpls, and another out by Lake Minnetonka. They have passed now, and I miss them.

    I do like quilted things – looks like the picture up top may have some quilted handle covers for cast iron pans, which I could actually use, though I need mine a bit more fitted than that.. (if that’s what they are).

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    1. Actually, double oven mitts for taking casseroles and cookie sheets and other things out of the oven that need more than one hand

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  2. Fun post, VS!

    I like some craft fairs, but not others. On Mother’s Day, a group of us went to the Shepherd’s Harvest Festival near Lake Elmo. I was only half-enthused about it, but I really enjoyed it. The weather was lovely, if a little cool, and there was a lot to see.

    There were four barns full of fiber crafts including clothing, basketry, knitting, crocheting, quilting, and more. I saw leather made from fish skins (who knew? And ew!)

    Most of the materials I saw were natural and had been naturally dyed or left with natural color. It was a heaven of wool yarns for knitters and crocheters.

    There were sheep of various kinds. You could watch all kinds of demos of activities involving sheep and wool: sheep herding with dogs, shearing, preparing the wool, and spinning on spinning wheels and drop spindles. There was a weaving demonstration, and the weaver let me weave a strand into place and beat it in.

    We were fascinated by the finest Shetland wool lace that I have ever seen, made by a very young woman who was standing in her sheep pen with her sheep. Many of the people there do the entire cycle from raising the lambs to sheep, to shearing, then processing, cleaning and dying the wool, to spinning, then knitting. I’m impressed.

    I was fascinated by the drop spindles. I’ve seen them before, but I learned how it’s done this time. I almost bought one, but then I’d also have to buy some raw wool and I’m not quite ready for that.

    I bought two hanks of yarn, a basket, and an indigo-dyed blouse. Also, an iced coffee and a vegan egg roll on a stick.

    All of us had a great time!

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    1. I went to that festival last year and really enjoyed it. I sat through the dog sheep herding demonstration twice. Since I am not a fabric/wool crafter, it was fascinating to see all of those vendors, but not fascinating enough that I decided to go again this year. Glad you had a good time!

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    2. Shepherd’s Harvest was my Mother’s Day for years! S&h now goes to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Fest with his girlfriend.

      He has been well trained!

      One year there was a woman spinning angora yarn, right off the bunny in her lap.

      We always found it to be a good mix of fiber and livestock.

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    3. Robin goes to Shepherd’s Harvest every year. It’s the Mother’s Day gift she gives herself. She went Saturday with a friend with whom she shares a lot of fiber arts interest and decided this year not to return again on Sunday. She had bought everything she wanted to buy.

      Last year she went on Saturday with that same friend and then I accompanied her on Sunday. The fish leather is amazing, if you ask me, and beautiful. The folks offering it are the parents, it turns out, of an artist I recruited to help me with a General Mills project (their name, Manthei, is unusual enough that I asked if they were any relation).

      We also go to a fiber fair in Cambridge at the Isanti County fairgrounds in the fall.

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  3. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    The Arts and Crafts Shows in Fountain Hills, AZ were fabulous. They were outdoors near our condo there stretching for blocks (a la the Uptown Art Fair). I think they had three of them per year–November, February and maybe April. There were many favorite vendors, including quilted oven mitts. I found many Midwest vendors who would display there in the winter as a tax deductible “warm business trip” that allowed them a winter getaway. There was a basket weaver from Ames, Iowa, a rug weaver from Hawarden, Ia (near my home town), and a vendor from Minnesota although I do not remember what he was selling.

    There was a couple in their late 70s-early 80s (age) from Eastern California, near Lake Tahoe, that I bought pottery mugs from. Their work was beautiful with intense colors and graceful forms. After talking with them awhile, we received an entire tutorial on California forest and wildfire policies, the practice of building houses near flammable wood residue, and California politics and fire policy. It was a lot! They obviously were invested in this issue and were filled with evangelical zeal regarding fires in CA. It was a one-sided conversation.

    There was also an Ojibway watercolor artist named George Ramirez out of Michigan that I bought prints from. I wanted to buy his entire catalogue.

    I can spend so much money at these functions. Uff Da.

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    1. Yes! Me too. I feel good about supporting artists and crafters though – instead of buying stuff from big box retailers or chains.

      I have to sign in every single time I want to post or “like” anything.

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        2. After enjoying roughly a month of WP letting me “like” comments to my heart’s content, a few days ago it kicked me out. Now I can only “like” the main blog, but no comments.

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        2. Okay, I figured out how to do it but it had already been done. Apparently I am not blocking any cookies at all!

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  4. I actually remember the very first time I experienced an Art Fair – San Francisco 1969 when I was there for the summer. I was absolutely entranced, had not seen anything like this before. I think it may have been on Chestnut Street, and not far from Fisherman’s Wharf. To see handmade pottery and wood carving, all the different sorts of earrings and other jewelry, leatherwork… Of course, it all came to the Midwest, eventually – I just hadn’t seen it yet.

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  5. Back when I was still in college at the University of Minnesota there used to be craft sales periodically in the enclosure over the Washington Ave. bridge and I would sometimes flog paintings there. With a friend, we also made an attempt at selling stained glass lampshades we had made at the Uptown Art Fair. I don’t think we sold any. This was before stained glass was a popular hobby and there were no craft stores selling the supplies. We had to go to a professional stained glass studio and beg them to sell us materials. The price of materials alone brought the selling price of our lampshades out of the range of impulse buys.

    Robin and my younger daughter have participated in various craft fairs in past years, selling sock dolls and felted ornaments and myriad other sewn and felted items, mostly around the Holidays. They both have gotten too busy to be able to keep that going.

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  6. I was asked to sell my Santas in Christmas fairs for three years in a row. People would tell me my prices were too high, that I should be selling them for $5-10. But there were three women in the Cities who would come looking for me. They would buy me out and pay extra. Then my life got complicated and I did not Santas to sell.

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  7. I love art/crafts fairs, and was a regular attendee at a bunch of them for years. I haven’t been to one since before COVID.

    The largest, and the only one I ever paid to attend, was the annual Arts and Craft Expo held at the St. Paul Civic Center toward the end of April. It was a juried exhibit that drew artisans from all over the US. They had everything from jewelry, to textiles, pottery, woodwork, basketry, paintings, you name it, and all of it was exquisite and expensive. Each year I bought myself one thing as a birthday present to myself, and I’d spend the whole day narrowing down my choices and selecting it.

    St. Kate’s Art Fair was always a fun and relaxing event to browse, as were the crafts fairs sponsored by MCAD and other schools’ art departments.

    My favorite crafts fairs, though, were the semi-annual pottery tours where a bunch of potters would open their studios to both the public and other potters.

    Another favorite was the Ramsey Jr. High’s craft fair in late November or early December. Good place to find unique gifts and support local artisans in the process.

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    1. We used to attend the Craft Expo. As a juried and selective craft show, the quality of the goods was uniformly excellent. One year when we were there, we got into conversation with a couple that crafted custom shoes. Robin asked them if they ever offered workshops and the result was that we traveled out to stay at their home in New Hampshire for a week of shoe making and touring the area.
      They became friends and after that they stayed with us whenever they were back in town for the Expo. Paul, the husband of the couple, was decades older than his wife, Molly and quite a remarkable man. He has since died but his wife still travels out to give workshops at North House in Grand Marais as well as at other venues.

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    1. Landmark Center calls it a holiday bazaar. It’s always the first weekend in December. One thing they have there that is a bit unusual is a raffle. I’ve won raffle prizes maybe five or six times over the years.

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  10. I was just terrible at art in school. I learned to sew in 4-H and from female relatives, and I was quite a good seamstress. I had patterns to follow, you see. I have never been to a craft show. I don’t think I ever want to go to one. It would make me feel inadequate. I put my creative energy into cooking and gardening.

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        1. Good.

          I see that WP is now giving me the option of not only replying to the comments but also to report them. Y’all had better be on your best behavior.

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  11. The Chickadee Boutique has been around for over 40 years and is finishing it’s last hurrah this weekend, Thurs-Sun. I went with my daughters on Saturday. Traditionally it’s had 2 3-4 week sessions per year, May and October. It’s in tents and an old building in a lovely backyard in Shoreview and is almost all local makers. Lawn art, quilting and other fiber arts, doll clothes, jewelry, art, and all the rest. I’m sorry to see it go, but it’s definitely worth the 1/2 hour trek from Bloomington to Shoreview (NOTE: ShoreVIEW, not ShoreWOOD). The adddress is 207 West St. Marie if anyone is interested. 9-5 on Thursday-Saturday and 10-5 on Sunday and then it’s gone.

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  12. For years we went to the Uptown and Edina art fairs. When I was growing up, my dad had a booth Uptown, but he only did it a couple of years.

    We stopped going to the Uptown fair as it became more and more crowded, and more focused on food trucks. Husband used to say he felt bad for vendors who had to put up with people with drippy ice cream cones and gyro sandwiches going through their booths and standing over the creations they’d worked so hard on.

    We still go to the St. Kate’s art fair whenever we can. It’s probably my favorite art fair and I almost always find something for myself or for a gift.

    Years ago we went to the Swayed Pines festival at St. John’s. It was mainly a music festival but there were also crafts for sale, some made by the monks from the abbey and the nuns from St. Ben’s.

    Some of my best treasures come from art fairs, especially pottery. I can’t resist a well-thrown bowl.

    WP is always wonky for me, I have to sign in all the time. I have the same problem with liking comments when on the iPad. Sometimes reloading the page helps.

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  13. I have a few pieces of laquerware by Linda Tong. She has a booth at the state fair each year. I always like to look at her intricate designs.

    I look forward to all the art fairs – in Red Wing, Afton, Hudson, Stillwater, Powderhorn Park. There was once a very nice annual art fair in Mears Park, though that has been gone for a long time. I recall going there with my mother once decades ago. My mother paid an artist to sketch a portrait of me. I had it framed.

    St. Kate’s art fair is a favorite. Lots of beautiful pottery and metal sculpture.

    Another one I like a lot is a church basement art fair, the weekend before Thanksgiving. They call it a Craftacular. It is small, but they have some very creative people.

    Anytime there is an art fair, just point me to it.

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