Many hands make artwork at Holiday Crafts Sale

Vendors come from PT, Chimacum, Port Angeles, Sequim

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Harp music and leather hammering were among the first sounds to greet those who entered the Port Townsend Community Center on Nov. 24.

The Port Townsend Arts Guild’s 28th annual Holiday Crafts Sale featured musical accompaniment from local musician David Michael, who’s been a harpist for 35 of the 60 years he’s played string instruments. Michael has lived in Port Townsend for 29 years.

As Michael’s hands glided across the strings, Jenny Preston of Chimacum provided a background rhythm of her own, her hammer making elaborate patterns in the belts she fashions for her business, Snow Creek Leather.

Preston has found satisfaction in her 45 years of leather-working because she enjoys working with her hands.

“This is one of those crafts where you can see it through, from start to finish, using your hands,” Preston said. “From its inception, you’re making goods out of raw materials.”

Preston praised the Holiday Crafts Sale for offering “good customers, good craftsmen and a good feeling,” and pledged to anyone who stopped by her booth, “We’ve got the belts to fit you.”

Debi Breitbach-Glass of Port Angeles has been spinning and weaving for 35 years, and she’s brought her business, the Shepherd’s Fold, to the Holiday Crafts Sales since at least 2000, if not before.

Breitbach-Glass expressed enthusiasm for the “handiness” of her field, but she also cited the range of creative ideas it allows her to make manifest.

“I love the colors and textures,” Breitbach-Glass said. “They call to my DNA. My grandmother was a weaver and a lacemaker, but I didn’t know because she died in 1921. Lucky we have Ancestry.com, huh?”

Breitbach-Glass has attended the Holiday Crafts Sale for the past 18 years because she likes how much she sees the people of Port Townsend appreciating hand-crafted goods.

“It’s a very artistic community,” Breitbach-Glass said. “Even events like this aren’t commercialized. They’re unique and individualistic.”

Pat Middelburg of Salem, Oregon, happened to be visiting her brother in Port Townsend when she sampled the honey of the Sequim Bee Farm.

Meg and Buddy Depew have been beekeepers for close to 16 years, but it’s only been within the past five years that they’ve made their hobby into a business, after their mentor, who’d previously bought their honey, retired from his business.

“We were all part of the North Olympic Peninsula Beekeepers’ Association,” Meg Depew said. “We just love bees, and through our work, we’re able to let the public know about the struggles of their colonies. They’re such important pollinators.”

Depew touted the national and international awards the Sequim Bee Farm has received from the Good Food Foundation, as well as the $20,000 grant it received from Kitsap Bank in recognition of its work as a “socially, economically and environmentally sound business.”

The Sequim Bee Farm took part in the Holiday Crafts Sale for the first time last year, and Depew considered it a no-brainer that they’d return this year, because “the people here are so wonderful.”

Port Townsend’s Dominica Lord-Wood, of Many Paths Fiber Art, has been a “fiber artist” of items ranging from garments to baskets for the past 25 years.

“What interests me is the cultural anthropology of it,” said Lord-Wood, who noted that many cultures create similar items but in different ways due to their traditions and circumstances. “In the 1880s in Connecticut, it wasn’t uncommon to pay for goods with woven baskets. I feel like it’s important to keep these cultures’ arts alive.”

Lord-Wood has been a regular at the Holiday Crafts Sale since 2015, not only because it’s so close by for her, but also because “it’s a really excellent crafts show, with lots of highly skilled professionals.”

Lisa DeGon is another Port Townsend Holiday Crafts Sale vendor who hails from Port Angeles, and she decided to take part in the event for the first time this year because of feedback she’d received from one of her customers, as well as good word of mouth she’d heard at the Sequim Farmers Market.

“I taught myself beaded jewelry art in 2008,” DeGon said. “I was inspired by Native American jewelry, and I love color so much that I have dreams about it at night. I’ll have these ideas swimming around in my head, and sometimes, if I see something that inspires me, I have to draw it right away.”

Even before her first Holiday Crafts Sale was done, DeGon noted she’d enjoyed meeting “interesting new people” at the event.

“I just love Port Townsend anyway,” DeGon said. “All those old houses are so gorgeous, and good thing for me, everyone loves beads in Port Townsend.”