First Posted: 11/17/2014
With more than 30 vendors lined up, the Waverly Community House’s (the Comm) 31st Annual Artisans’ Marketplace boasts something for everyone — from fresh bread, to handmade soaps, to locally-designed jewelry. The juried show will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 22 and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 23 at the Comm, 1115 N. Abington Road. Tickets are $6 and include admission for both days.
The atmosphere of the event, according to vendor Joe Kubic, who will offer for sale his pottery works for the third year, is “fun” and “friendly.”
“I enjoyed it from the first year I was there,” he said. “I had a great time talking to the vendors. It was really nice meeting a lot of people. And the crowds are always big.”
The Waverly resident crafts his products on a potter’s wheel, creating both decorative and functional pieces. He offers a variety of tableware, mugs, cups, decorative trays with carvings on them and even speakers for a cell phone.
Another Artisans’ Marketplace veteran vendor is Linda Weaver, of Little Red Hen Soap Factory. The West Abington Township resident began participating in the show about 10 years ago, and makes cold process soaps — some vegan and others with goat milk.
“The great properties of cold process soap include the natural glycerin, which is retained in the handcrafted soap, but removed in the commercial soap making process,” she said, “and I choose the oils and butters for their individual benefits to the skin.”
The soaps are available in a variety of fragrances, including essential oils, popular fragrance oils and some unscented options for those who prefer or require no fragrance. The business also offers natural wooden soap decks, handmade in the USA.
New to the show this year is Rachael Arnone, of Bachestinks, a small business she named from a combination of two nicknames from her childhood and adolescent years.
Her wares are handmade from vintage, recycled and found materials, the majority of which she obtains from local flea markets, yard sales, antique stores, old barns, attics and closets. After cleaning them off, she incorporates these “treasures” into original patterns for kitchenware and home accessories, such as aprons, potholders, market totes, table runners, lace banners, pillows, clothespin bags, kindling and cut flower carriers and her signature item, tomato pincushions.
She njoys the simplicity of the business, which she runs with a 40-year-old sewing machine out of a spare bedroom in her Honesdale home.
“That’s what I aim for with my products,” she said, “a return to a simpler time, as well as a more resourceful time. Products were made to last. They were mended and repaired over and over until they were finally threadbare and lived their last breaths as pieces of scrap tying up the tomato plants. I absolutely love that what I create invokes these memories for some who may have lost them just for a bit.”
Another vendor new to this year’s show is For the Love of Wood, LLC, owned by Gary and Patty Brown, of Mountain Top.
“My husband and I both absolutely love wood,” Patty Brown said. “And my husband has always done some type of woodworking.”
The couple currently makes handturned products from wood, deer antlers and acrylics, including pens, shaving sets, bottle stoppers, seam rippers, compact mirrors, makeup brushes, trinket bowls and Ikebana vases.
“Not everybody needs an ink pen,” she said. “Mot everybody needs a bottle stopper. So, we try and do a little bit of everything, so that our customers can come and look and find something that maybe is a little different.