This weekend was our Mahoosuc Mills Down Home Holiday Festival. It’s always the second weekend of December, and people come from all over to experience our down home holiday fun.
The St. Hyacinth’s Christmas Bazaar is part of the festival, and The Women Who Run With the Moose have a table down there where we sell crafts. It’s the second most popular booth at the Christmas Bazaar, if I do say so myself. The first is still the Blessed Bling Boutique. They rake it in.
For some reason, the whole thing crept up on us this year. I think it’s because Thanksgiving was so late, and then we had that storm last week. Usually we have a theme for our table, you know? Where we really focus our energies on one kind of item, so we make a big splash. Hopefully. But, like I said, this year we were caught short, so we had a last minute planning session over to Betty’s to come up with a plan. Kinda, sorta.
Shirley goes, “Let’s just get rid of the all crap from past years that didn’t sell.”
“I’m up for that,” I says. “I bet we all have some past projects kicking around. I know I do.”
Rita chimes in, “We’re going to have to come up with a better name, though.”
“Yeah,” Dottie adds, “I can just see the publicity now: The popular Women Who Run With the Moose craft table returns to the Christmas Bazaar with this year’s theme, ‘Crap That Didn’t Sell.’”
“It has a certain ring to it, doesn’t it?”
“I know!” Celeste says. “Let’s call it ‘Our Greatest Hits!’”
“Oh, that’s good! Folks’ll be dazzled to see how inspired we’ve been over the years.”
So that’s what we did. We unearthed some wine glass markers and crochet beer cozies from the year our theme was ‘Drink Safe.’ There were frames we’d modge-podged with pictures from magazines and fimo dough earrings and pins. All of us had some of those hanging around.
We had a bunch them Pine Cones pets. Not our strongest effort, to be sure, but Rita come 
up with the idea, and we wanted to encourage her. See, Rita’s what I’d call craft impaired. I mean, she’s an “avert your eyes, burn yourself with the hot glue gun, super glue your fingers together in the name of all that is Holy, what-the-heck-is-that” kind of crafter. Yet I gotta hand it to her, she’s always game to give it a go.
Sadly, we didn’t have any of those shoulder pad crafts left. That was our banner year, and people just gobbled them up. Didn’t have hat trees either. They were my great idea and frankly, our biggest dud. I still don’t get it. For some reason, nobody wanted a fake tree, about a foot tall, with little hats glued to the bare branches. I mean, we had ones with a wintry theme, Valentines Day (hats decorated with little hearts), red, white and blue hats trees for the Fourth of July, witches hats on a Halloween tree and a Thanksgiving one featuring little Pilgrim hats and bonnets with a turkey perched on the top. You get the idea. Well, we couldn’t even give those away. Ended up using them to start the annual New Year’s Day bonfire up to Dottie’s camp. Turns out our hat tress were a bad craft idea, but great kindling!
We filled out our table with stuff we created during a knit-a-thon one Sunday. Dot got a bunch of chunky yarn on sale down to the Wallymart, and we all whipped up some cozy cowls. Rita knew better than to attempt that kind of advanced crafting, so she hosted and kept the snacks coming.
How’d we do? It was a win/win in my book. We were happy to get rid of some stuff we had kicking around, the folks who bought it were happy to have it, and as usual, we had a blast hanging out together. Now, that’s the magic of Christmas.
That’s it for now. Catch you on the flip side!
Here Ida Tell It: Holiday Crafts
Featured holiday video: Ida LeClair tells a story about the worst Christmas gift ever!
2020
February 29: Makin’ Whoopie!, Franklin Opera House, 7:30pm, Franklin, NH
May 13: Book Reading, Windham Public Library, 6:00pm, Windham, ME
May 14, Book Reading, Wiggin Memorial Library, 6:00pm, Stratham, NH
Watch Susan’s TEDxPortsmouth Talk