By Setarreh Massihzadegan
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

A colorful array of handmade treasures lured hundreds of shoppers to the Oakleaf Clubhouse for the third annual Artisan Craft Fair at Linden Ponds.

Hand-knit sweaters, exotic wood pens, crocheted handbags, multilayered wooden bowls, and glittering jewelry were among the items displayed by 30 vendors at the popular and growing event.

Of the vendors, 17 were people living at Linden Ponds and 13 were outside sellers.

Time for talent
For many of the Linden Ponds community members selling their crafts, the fair provided an opportunity to display talent they had been unable to delve into completely until retirement.

“I went for many years [without doing this] because I had other commitments in my life,” says Sylvia Stephen, who lives at Linden Ponds and whose jewelry was on display at its craft fair. “But when I turned 70 years old, I said, ‘That’s it, I’ve been waiting all my life to do this thing.’”

Stephen received a degree in the arts and training in her native country, Chile, before moving to the U.S. in 1984. She has had the chance to pick up her tools again recently while taking classes at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and at Metalwerx, a jewelry school in Waltham, Mass., where she also rents studio space.

This year Stephen began teaching classes for other Linden Ponds community members in the living room of her two-bedroom apartment home. Stephen supplies her students with the materials and know-how to make jewelry like the items in the beaded collection she displayed at the fair.

Big business
Business was booming for exhibitors like Beverly Stewart, who lives at Linden Ponds and came up with the idea for the fair there three years ago.

Stewart had been displaying her work, including baskets of stuffed animals wearing knitted tops, at craft fairs elsewhere before she came to Linden Ponds. At this year’s event, she was in an unlikely predicament.