Crafting, giving May baskets a passion of the season Filled with cookies, penny candy or tulips, homemade creation a taste of history and a gift of fun

Poet Pat Ranzoni of Bucksport begins her splendid narrative poem “Making Maybaskets” by stating, “You’ve saved small pasteboard containers all winter.” That sentence alone was enough to get my well-developed sense of nostalgia all fired up. When I was a child growing up in Bingham, hanging May baskets filled with penny candy bought at Kelly’s Cash and Carry was a May Day ritual. Actually, I was always a lot more interested in crafting May baskets than in hanging and receiving them – all that running was exhausting and I failed to grasp the intrigue of kissing.

The poem continues: “Your mother trades her eggmoney for pleats of tissue and crinkled crepe paper at the 5 & 10 the colors of arbutus trailing on ledges … Paper the color of shad blossoms … Paper the color of forsythia … Paper the color of all the leaves in Jacob Buck valley! … Paper the tints of new growth nerving against granite pinks old as earth … You plan which little boxes will be which shades and designs. Daffodil cups, lavender-trimmed rectangular ones … Imagine Hattie Grindle’s paper parasols … You make flour and water paste … you chase kiss chase kiss …”

The heading of Ranzoni’s poem gives the context – 1947-1957, Hancock County, Maine, but it could have been Any County, Maine.

The craft of making May baskets hasn’t changed, as Valerie Bellomy of Hampden will tell you. She and her husband, David, who died recently, made as many as 1,800 every year for years, selling them in local stores as a fund-raiser for a scholarship fund at Hampden Academy.

“May Day is a great holiday,” she said. “It’s the one where you give something you make to a neighbor or a friend – a great holiday for little kids.”

This year, lacking her husband’s help and creative spark, Bellomy expects to make only about 100 May baskets to sell at Dysart’s truck stop on Coldbrook Road.

So if you aren’t lucky enough to get one of Bellomy’s May baskets, make one of your own as a way to mark May Day, which for the ancient Celts and Saxons was the first day of planting.

You’ll need a clean container – an empty margarine cup, a round ice cream container, a plastic strawberry basket, or even an empty tin can. How you decorate the container is limited only by your imagination. You might use tissue or crepe paper ruffles and flowers as the Bellomys did. You might use lace, paper doilies, artificial flowers, ribbon, beaded fringe or anything your heart and design sense desires. Use your glue stick liberally. Get into the Elmer’s glue up to your elbows. Don’t for one minute think your creation won’t amount to much. It will, if for no other reason than it makes you happy to cut and paste and craft.

After your basket is decorated, fill it with cookies you baked, penny candy or tulips you picked in your garden. I suggest red ones. If you’d like to include Pat Ranzoni’s poem in your May basket, go to http://www.xcp.bfn.org/ranzoni.html.

Hang your May basket on the doorknob of the house of the person you want to receive it, knock loudly and disappear. The idea is to remain anonymous as the giver, unless you are young and single, in which case you may want to let the basket recipient know it’s you so the chase-and-kiss part can get into gear.

Snippets

In last week’s By Hand, I rearranged geography and placed Carleton College in Wisconsin. Turns out it’s actually in Minnesota. Did somebody move it when I wasn’t looking?

Julia Hathaway’s 6-year-old son, Adam, is concerned about the plight of children in Iraq. He asked his mother to crochet granny square baby afghans. Proceeds from the sale of the afghans will be donated UNICEF. So far, Adam has raised $40 for UNICEF. If readers would like to donate small amounts of yarn to the project, call the Hathaways at 990-1313.

Spring Valley Farm in Bancroft is holding a Fiberfest at 2 p.m. Sunday, May 4. Activities include Stomper, his harem and his lambs; Lily the angora bunny, Lisa the spinner, Irma the weaver and Sandi the knitter. Call 448-3226 for information or visit www.aeiservices.com/spring valley farm/.

The Brewster Inn in Dexter recently played host to a two-day quilting bee for a local quilting group. Innkeepers Michael and Ivy Brooks are interested in attracting other stitching groups that would like to plan a retreat at the inn. To learn more, call 924-3130 or visit www.brewsterinn.com.

The Albion Historical Society is raising funds to complete payment on a monument to honor native son Elijah Parish Lovejoy, a martyr to freedom of the press. The society has for sale afghans highlighting Lovejoy’s life and work. Call Janet Dow of the Albion Historical Society at 437-4682 for details.

Ardeana Hamlin can be reached at 990-8153, or e-mail ahamlin@bangordailynews.net.