The 42nd annual Show Me Crafters fall show hosted on the Missouri State Fairgrounds included 126 vendor booths that not only occupied the Agriculture Building, but also the Varied Industries Building and the outdoors.
Sunshine brought a busy day Saturday for vendors who had a wide array of craft items for sale for the weekend show. Show-Me Crafters President Wayne Viebrock said he was pleased with the turnout.
“It’s been going super, I mean the vendors seem to be happy,” he said. “It’s beautiful weather, you couldn’t beat that.”
Viebrock said the crowd was so large Saturday morning that “you couldn’t stir it with a stick.”
“The parking lot was so full that the security guy said ‘you got that many people in there?’” he added. “I said ‘yeah’ and he said ‘I can’t even get through with my truck, you guys are doing super.’”
Heather McGrath, of Warrensburg, was busy looking at a birdhouse made by Carlos Lynch, also of Warrensburg, inside the Ag Building. McGrath said it was her second time to attend the fall event. She came last year also.
Show-Me Crafters has two shows each year, a spring show hosted the second weekend of March and the fall show hosted the second weekend of November. McGrath was pleased to find out she could come back in March 2017.
Vendor Lynch, a Korean War veteran, said he enjoyed making all types of birdhouses. Many are created with Missouri license plate roofs. Some are made with men’s boots and some he builds to look like wood cabins.
His niece Kim Wright, of Knob Noster, said one larger country hideaway, wooden birdhouse comes with a front porch, fishing pole and a porch swing.
“He did that out of a magazine,” Wright said. “It has a porch swing that swings, and a little black pig on there, a broom and shot gun.”
Saturday morning, Cindy and Jack Roby, of Lee’s Summit, were checking out handmade jewelry created by Carolyn Stonner, of Jefferson City.
Stonner explained that her jewelry is made from vintage or re-purposed spoons.
Cindy Roby noted it was their first time to attend the craft fair. She and her husband decided to attend because they had met a crafter at the Lewisburg festival.
“He said he would be in Sedalia, so we came to pick up an item from him,” she added. “This is a very good show.”
Inside the Varied Industries Building, Grace Lewark, 6, of Overland Park, Kansas, was trying on a crochet hat beside her mother Katie Lewark, formerly of Sedalia. The pair were looking over the wares of Beverly Parker and her daughter Cindi Lindgen, both of Sedalia, who own B & C Crochet.
Parker said they make hats, headbands, baskets, drink mits and baby shoes and only recently baby outfits.
Jane Kranichfield, of Sedalia, brought six friends to the craft show who were perusing items in the Industries Building, Saturday. She noted that although most lived elsewhere now, they all went to school in Sedalia together as children. Her friends Mari Daniels, of Kansas City, and Barb Baxter, of Norborne, were looking over small jewelry pieces.
“She’s picking out stocking stuffers for her girls,” Daniels said of Baxter.
Vendor Jessi Young, of Sedalia, said this was her first craft show.
“I fretted because I didn’t know how much stuff to bring,” she said. “I’m a nervous wreck,”
Young, owner of Just Meshing Around, was selling mesh holiday wreaths and trees. She was being helped by her mother, Colleen Libbert, also of Sedalia, who said Young made several items the night before.
At 1 p.m. Saturday, inside the Ag Building, Viebrock said although he’s had offers to move the show to a different facility he plans to keep the same dates and host the event at its present location and for years to come.
“Everybody knows that and all our vendors have it on their calendars,” he said.
He noted he was pleased with the variety of crafts offered at the show.
“You’d be surprised at the vendors who are adding to their stuff, and adding different stuff,” he said. “Let’s put it this way, if you can’t find it here, you’re going to drive your wheels off going someplace else.”
