By PHYLLIS ZORN

Staff writer

A vendor selling woodcrafts and another selling crocheted items will be new to Marion’s annual Art in the Park and Craft Show this year.

Kaleb Wheeler, owner of Kaleb Wheeler Carpentry in Fall River, will bring handcrafted wood items to the 40th event Sept. 15.

“I do tables, bowls, and small furniture items,” Wheeler said.

He plans to bring rustic ladders, dining room tables, coffee tables, and hand-turned bowls.

This will be the first craft show ever he’ll offer hand-turned bowls. They are a recent creation for Wheeler.

“This is going to be my fourth or fifth show, the first time in Marion,” Wheeler said. “I heard Marion’s show was a really good one. I had some friends who recommended I do it, and I signed up.”

Betsy Binford, Uniontown, is bringing crocheted items.

“I’ve got everything from scrubbies to ear warmers and hats to a mermaid tail,” she said.

Binford considers herself more of a hobbyist than a vendor. It’s about doing what she loves to do and sharing that with others.

“I’m not what you would call a true vendor,” she said. “I do like one craft show a year.”

At craft shows, she makes money to replenish her yarn, and make items to donate to homeless centers, cancer centers, neonatal intensive care units, and other places that can use the items.

“I do it anonymously,” Binford said. “I’ve got friends who go there and take my stuff.”

Her sister, Belinda Skiles, convinced her to come to the Marion show. She’ll be getting a visit in with her sister as well.

Crocheting is a hobby from childhood, Binford said. When she was 5, a neighbor put a crochet hook in one of her hands and a ball of yarn in the other.

“I don’t use patterns for most of my stuff,” she said. “I look at a picture and think, OK, I think I can do that.”

She’s bringing along a cousin who also creates crocheted items, as well as knitted items.

“I’m stretching now because I don’t have a lot of stuff made,” Binford said. “I’m just taking what I do have.”

The craft show features handcrafted bath and body products, ceramics, leatherworks, yard art, and woodcrafts. Repurposed items, sometimes called “upcycled” crafts, which have been popular at past shows, will appear again this year.

Food vendors will offer freshly-made bierocks, barbecue, cherry limeades, stuffed cucumbers, pies, and grilled chicken and taco salads.

Visitors can register to win one of 10 gift certificates worth $20 to be used at any booth during the day.

Shuttle service will depart every 15 minutes from Marion Die and Fixture, 421 W. Main, and the Marion baseball complex north of the football stadium on Eisenhower Dr.