Fall Craft Festival brings artisans to Spring Creek
SPRING CREEK — Vendors from the area those from out of town were in the Spring Creek High School gym on Saturday and Sunday selling everything from from toys to art works to soaps.
It was all part of the Lamoille Women's Club's Fall Craft Festival.
Dick Adams has been a woodworker for 25 years. He ran a booth with detailed wooden vehicle toys, including train engines, mining trucks and even a steamboat.
He said the times needed to create the vehicles can vary: a bulldozer took seven days; a semi truck five days; and a dump truck six hours. A mining dump truck, with thick wooden tires, took eight hours for the tires alone, he said.
Betsy Macfarlan, who lives near Ely, has raised goats for 30 years. "I harvest the fiber and the meat from them and I also make goat's milk soap." She arranged baskets of soap bars in rows at her booth.
Macfarlan started her Double Bar J Farm business while living in Spring Creek for a while.
Making goat's milk soap is "like cooking any recipe," Macfarlan said. "Mix the oils, melt the solid fats down, mix in the olive oil, mix the sodium hydroxide and the water together in two separate pots. When everything's 80 degrees, mix them together and add the scent and pour it in the mold," she said. "Two weeks later, you've got something nice."
She said her lavender soap sells especially well. However, she noted, "my most popular soap scent depends on the time of the year, whether I'm selling a lot of soap dishes or whether I'm selling a lot of knitted cashmere products."
Idaho photographer Todd Sherwood was selling giclee — or high-quality — prints of his work, which he produces at his home studio. He also makes his own frames.
To capture his photos, which often depict livestock and mountain landscapes, he said he travels around "the whole northwest part of the country, from Minnesota and Idaho all the way to the coast — and that's also my sales area."
Sherwood said the Tetons were one of his favorite photography spots to visit over the past year. He said he also enjoys photographing the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho.
Angelina Kendzior of A Glass Hole has been making glass art pieces for some eight years. They include miniature Christmas trees made from melted-together glass shards as well as glass dishes with lavender plants painted in the center.
"Everything is kiln-fired and we recycle and upcycle bottles," she said. She said she has improved over the years through trial and error.
"The Christmas trees and the evergreen trees and all the ornaments are really fun because you can do a lot of different creativeness with them," Kendzior said.
Veronica Lamb had a table full of her Bow Peep crochet crafts, which included soft, round snowmen and pumpkins made from thick yarn, as well as cuddly renditions of pop culture characters.
She said her biggest sellers are her crochet dolls of preschool cartoon dog "Bluey" and the titular stars of the 2024 film "Deadpool and Wolverine." Crocheted axolotls have also been wildly popular, she added.
While Lamb has done crochet work for 15 or 20 years, "I just started doing craft fairs this fall," she noted. "I've really enjoyed that I get to meet new people and meet other vendors."
"Punky" Bishop, who recently moved to Elko from the Gardnerville and Reno area, was selling handcrafted jewelry and accessories such as polymer clay and leather earrings and leather hair slides. She is on Instagram at Colyer of Creature Comforts has made stuffed animals from scratch for around five years. She uses genuine minky fabric. She said she started because her children love plush toys.
Elko-based Jean Cox of Tayja's Candles, named after her pet dog, ran a booth full of dessert-inspired candles in flavors such as blueberry cobbler. She also sold candles with small figurines inside them, which she said are made with silicon molds. She has been making candles since 2017 but her business has only existed in its current form since 2023.
Elena G. offered a variety of pottery shaped into flower petals or with intricate painted-on images such as trees and eyes. She has practiced the art form for about 15 years and her works are entirely hand-made.
Serge G. said the only materials needed for the pottery are clay and glass, with the addition of "fire and soul."
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