Fall arts, craft fair lures more than 10,000

PRESQUE ISLE – Midsummerlike weather kept many people outdoors this weekend, but the Northern Maine Forum still managed to entice more than 10,000 visitors to its 19th annual Fall Arts and Crafts Fair.

James Kaiser, director of the civic center, said Sunday that the warm weather “isn’t helping,” but that people still were coming because of the diversity of products on display.

“We have so many different products, if someone comes here looking for something to buy, they’re probably going to find it,” Kaiser said.

He said organizers sold all but one of 132 spaces for the Columbus Day weekend event, the only stipulation being that vendors had to exhibit arts or crafts. With Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas just around the corner, the director said the event is more successful than the forum’s spring show. The fall event has drawn crafters and artisans from Canada and southern Maine, and even from as far away as New York and Massachusetts in past years.

Lena Schmitz of Mechanic Falls made the long trip, which she said took exactly five hours and two minutes, because of her success at last year’s event.

Schmitz creates handmade dried fruit hangers and swags as well as scented candles. For the hangers and swags, she strings together clusters of bay leaves, dried apple and orange slices, cinnamon sticks, pomegranates and nutmeg nuts and decorates them with raffia bows, ribbons and wood accents. She also applies “secret recipe” apple, orange and cinnamon oil to scent the hangers and swags.

Schmitz said a friend of hers invented the swags and was selling them wholesale to catalogs. Seven years ago, when her friend got out of the business, Schmitz asked if she could jump in.

It’s a time-consuming affair. Schmitz dries most of the apple and orange slices herself – she said her husband was home drying more fruit while she was at the fair. And she goes through a lot of materials – last year she used 300 pounds of bay leaves for the swags and hangers.

Even so, Schmitz said she enjoys what she does.

“I went into crafts out of boredom,” she said. “Doing crafts allows you to be creative. Plus, I love talking to people. I get to do both.”

Local crafters like Carole Moore set up shop at the fair for similar reasons. The Caribou resident has been creating stained-glass pieces for eight years and has been coming to craft fairs since 1996.

“I was retired and needed something to do, so I took an adult ed class,” Moore said.

She said she had a choice between stained glass and pottery, but thought she’d be terrible working with a pottery wheel.

Soon after, she was making things for family and friends, and friends of friends, until some of them began to encourage her to bring her work to craft fairs.

It’s expensive – the cheapest glass she uses costs $7 per square foot. But Moore said she keeps coming back because people remember her and stop by to see her work. “It validates you, you know? You work hard and people come in and say they love your work.”