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
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