My local church has been holding
a lot more fundraisers in recent years. It used to be just the summer carnival
and the Christmas bazaar. The Oktoberfest was added later on, but is now well
established as well. However, lately it seems as though my local church will
use any excuse to hold a raffle or a festival. With church attendance being down
in general, statistically, the additional funds are unfortunately needed to
keep the lights on, the air conditioning running in the summer and the heat on
in the winter, the grass cut and winter snow in the parking lot plowed.
The majority of the church’s
fundraisers also feature craft vendors now, regardless of the event’s theme or
the season. I will frequently make a brief stop at pretty much any fundraiser
my local church holds in search of handmade keychains for my collection. Due to
past experience at such events, I was confident I would find a keychain or two
at the 2025 Spring Craft Fair. However, I was somewhat surprised by the
rather…eclectic assortment of vendors this year. After I got home, I jotted
down some notes on the ones that had stood out the most to me, in preparation
for a blog post I planned to write to show off my new keychain acquisition. In
typical fashion, for me, I ended up misplacing those notes. So this post is now
very late, something I apologize for profusely and take full responsibility
for. But since I did find my notes, and since the keychain is still worth
sharing, here we are.
Notable vendors at the church’s
spring craft fair in 2025 included:
1. Representatives from a specialty pickle shop
2. A local, self-published fantasy author trying to sell
copies of her books (I read the back cover of the first volume in her book
series while at the craft fair. And if the rambling, densely packed writing
style used for the cover blurb matches the rest of the book, I don’t think I’d manage
to get through the whole story.)
3. A pair of girl scouts promoting a presentation they had
organized on positive body image as a project towards earning their silver
scouting award
4. And lastly, a woman selling a hodgepodge of home décor
items and designer bags for cheap. There was a Lauren Conrad purse shaped like
a seashell that I was looking at, until I discovered it still had a store
security tag on it, which to me seemed suspicious.
As I mentioned already, I did
find one keychain I liked at the craft fair. I thought it was a crab when I
bought it, due to the coloration and the eye placement. However, the leg count
is off for a crab. Crabs are decapods, meaning they typically have ten legs.
The keychain has only eight legs, so it might actually be an octopus. On the
other hand, the black stitching on the two front appendages does seem to
suggest crab claws. Regardless of which one it is, I still think this handmade keychain
looks adorable, with its cartoony features. However, I don’t know enough about
fiber arts to say whether it is knitted or crocheted. I did ask the vendor, but
I forget what she said. Why didn’t I write that down I wonder?
Signed, Treesa
