Scores of art and crafts and food vendors plied their wares to shoppers Saturday on the opening day of a three-day festival at the Westmoreland Fairgrounds.
The 27th annual Pennsylvania Labor Day Arts & Crafts Retail Marketplace, which features 150 vendors spread across the 100-acre fairgrounds, is among a handful of festivals across the country that have not been canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Shoppers and vendors alike were buzzing at the holiday weekend event that could be a “make it or break it” show for some of the craftsmen who rely upon such events for a living.
After eight years of growing their business, Lisa and Joe Spadaford of Youngstown, Ohio, thought they’d finally come up with a solid business with their Bullet Jewelry Designs.
He crafts the jewelry — everything from rings and earrings to necklaces and bracelets, featuring bullet ends that can be customized with 30 different colored crystals. She handles marketing, design and their website, BulletJewelry Designs.com
By the time they were preparing to open at the Field and Stream Show in Lansing, Mich., last spring, the business had grown sufficiently for Lisa Spadaford to quit her day job.
“We sell on Amazon, Etsy and eBay. We do sports shows, gun shows and craft shows. We go to New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia. We had a whole year of shows booked, and then we got shut down back in March,” Lisa Spadaford said.
In the interim, she has gone back to work, but hopes the show end of the business will come back.
The Labor Day festival is the first show they’ve done in six months.
Other shows scheduled for later this year, including Delmont’s Apple ’n Arts Festival in Delmont, Fort Ligonier Days and a Cleveland festival scheduled for October already have canceled.
The dearth of arts and crafts shows and their love of festivals and being together drew Connellsville sisters Linda Grabosky and Tammy Madder and their aunt, Linda Brown, to the Westmoreland Fairgrounds on Saturday. Although they hit the festival most years, this year it was a must on their limited list of options.
“It doesn’t seem as crowded as most years, and the weather is just fine,” Brown said, browsing hand-crafted jewelry and knives forged from railroad spikes at Billie Triplett’s Triplett Forge display.
Triplett, who traveled from New Freeport, Greene County, near the West Virginia border, said she and her husband had scheduled two shows a month throughout the summer and then one a week in the fall, when the pandemic shutdown hit.
Although crafts are a side business for the couple, they’ve missed the hustle and bustle of the shows.
“This is the first one I’ve done since March,” Triplett said. “We’re really looking forward to 2021.”
“I just feel bad for the people who make things,” Grabosky said, checking out the jewelry Billie Triplett crafts from shells.
Like the Connellsville women, Suzette Dieter of North Huntingdon and her mother, Marjorie Sommers of Greensburg, said they’ve missed the arts and crafts shows that shut down this year.
“This is just great. The guys are doing fantasy football today. So, we girls are out shopping,” she said, juggling an armful of packages as she stood in line at a food booth.
