Knitting
Chilly houses don’t bother Barb Tower.
Tower knits arm warmers with glitz to keep cozy on chilly winter nights and for Christmas presents.
Tower got the idea of the arm warmers with thumb holes from her daughter, Tracey, during a telephone call on Skype.
“She skyped me and said ‘Mom, you got to knit me some’, ” said Tower, a serious knitter.
Last year her arm warmers were plain, but this year she has glitzed them up with beads and buttons.
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“They’re quite popular,” said Tower, who sells the arm warmers for $12 at the Festival of Trees in Camrose.
Carving
Mike Saretsky can see faces in trees.
Where some people see a fungus or a knot, Saretsky can see a face or a house or animal. The bark comes alive in Saretsky’s hands. The Watson, Sask., man has been carving ever since he was a child.
Now, it’s how he makes a living. Saretsky walks into the bush near his central Saskatchewan studio and finds interesting pieces of wood or bark.
“I bring it back to my studio and see what I can make of it.”
Saretsky also does chainsaw carving, totem poles and creates abstract art from the wood he collects. For Christmas, he concentrates on smaller pieces people can afford for unique Christmas gifts.
To preserve the wood, he removes the moss and treats it with a special chemical to protect it from ultraviolet light.
He also removes the knots and preserves them so they won’t shrivel.
Once the pieces are replaced, he begins carving his faces.
“I find wood that looks interesting,” he said.
Sewing, Baking
Denise Renman’s sponge toffee sells out the first day of the three-day Christmas festival. There’s no way the working mother can make enough sponge toffee in her spare time after work to satisfy her customers’ sweet tooth. Her next biggest seller is her special vanilla caramels. They taste like McIntosh toffee, but are as soft as butter.
“The old ladies come by and they love them. They can bite them,” said Renman, during a break in selling to her customers.
Renman hopes by sewing, cooking and baking, her children will catch her entrepreneurial spirit and realize they too can make extra money with a little hard work.
“When I didn’t have any money, this is how I bought Christmas presents,” said Renman, whose booth has become an institution for annual visitors.
Other hits at Renman’s booth are chocolate shortbread, peanut butter cups and any food that’s Swedish. Camrose has a strong Scandinavian heritage.
At her booth are small cloth facial tissue covers, cotton lunch kits and instructional guitar playing videos made by her husband.
“My goal is to be different than everyone else,” she said.
One of her tricks is to give Swedish names to her baking.
This year Renman sold most of her slickepinne, which means lick stick, or sucker.
Renman’s slickepinne recipe is below. It can be poured into a large pan and made into hard candy, or poured into small pools on marble and a stick added to make suckers.
Hard candy or suckers
Boil water to test your candy thermometer. If the water test reads 212 F or 100 C, then it is correct. If it is off in any way, adjust the recipe up or down accordingly for better results.
1 cup water250 mL
1 cup corn syrup250 mL
3 1/2 cups sugar875 mL
Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally to the hard crack stage and the thermometer reads 300 F.
Remove from heat and stir in one teaspoon of food colouring and 1/2 to one teaspoon of candy flavouring. Pour onto cookie sheet. Cool.
Break apart and store in an airtight container or pour onto a marble cutting board in small pools and add a stick to make suckers.
Makes two pounds of candy. You can also dust them with icing sugar to keep them from sticking together.
