Sun Days on Orcas | The festivities continue

||| SUN DAYS ON ORCAS by EDEE KULPER |||

What another lovely week it’s been in this Christmas season.

Last Sunday, the library hosted the 8th Annual Children’s Christmas Market. This is one of the events that makes Orcas Island so special and unique. Any child can enter by paying $5 for a table, and the wares they make and bring to sell are fabulous.

Walk along the tables, and you see the cutest scenes of children managing their money, relating with customers, and talking about the creations they spent days or weeks making.

It’s not just the business aspects that are fun to watch. Many of these kids have done this every year – we’ve watched them grow up at this market.

Nootka Townsend has been selling a varying assortment of handmade prayer flags, origami light decorations, carved and painted chopsticks, and beeswax candles since she was tiny. Years ago, when the event was held in the Salmonberry classrooms and the Senior Center held a Christmas bazaar right across the street, people would pack the place and Nootka’s large stock would sell out every time.

Serafina Buck was known for her large boxes of beautiful assorted homemade cookies that were a steal for $9. (Nothing can be sold for over $10.) Those were a mainstay in my holiday shopping, and I think they were for other adults too. This year she pivoted to selling beautifully decorated cupcakes with a friend.

The Casaday girls have been selling their handmade soaps in different scents and colors for so long that it’s no longer Ravevah and Viviane, it’s Viviane and Zoey.

Makar Ashirov and Emmett and Lillie Beadnall tend toward culinary items each year, and without Makar’s homemade tomato soup and the Beadnalls’ homemade pretzels, I would starve. There’s usually so much preparation hubbub each morning before the market begins that we don’t end up eating much before our kids arrive and set up their table. I’d walk around bonking if not for that hot bowl of nourishing soup and the warm, professionally-made pretzel.

Some kids have moved on. Molly and Lucy Troxel have sold their lovely printed cards for as long as I can remember. They weren’t there this year, but I know their artistic endeavors continue, as I’ve seen Lucy’s hand-drawn cards at the Lum Farm on Coffelt Farm Preserve.

Some kids were debuting their wares this year. We’re morphing into a whole new combination and generation of market sellers, as I don’t even know the names of many of the kids in my photos.

You’ll just have to go next year if you’ve never been. Thank you so much to all of the kids, to the library, and to Rachel Bishop for organizing it each year. It is one of my favorite December occasions. (All people were masked and followed a well-organized circular circuit to keep from clumping up too much.)

I’m not done, though. There’s more!

Have you been to the front of Island Market to see the winners of the 2nd Annual Gingerbread Contest organized by the Funhouse and the market? Last year we witnessed the island’s first entries in such a contest, and they were unbelievably gigantic, detailed, and professional! The bar was set so high by our creative children and adults that I felt a little intimidated at the idea of entering this year!

Bonnie Mahony won Best in Show again with a perfection at food art that is pretty tough to match. I’ve got to pull her aside sometime and interview her about her background – there’s got to be a great backstory about how she acquired such skill. Her daughter, Sofia, is following in her footsteps with another win this year in a younger category. These gingerbread competitors start weeks in advance and have to allot for difficulties and failures along the way.

Make sure you go and look at every entrant’s creation. Some of them were made by kids who were also preparing wares for the Children’s Market at the library.

On Thursday of this past week, the Sea View Theatre hosted another showing of the Film Festival’s The Rescue, about the kids’ soccer team in Thailand who were trapped in a cave. I mention this because it was an event that filled gaps in me that have been widening for two years. That’s how long it’s been since many of us have seen a big-screen movie here.

Oh, how lovely it was to sit among other viewers, watch a fabulously filmed story on a gigantic screen, and even eat movie popcorn (then mask again). Any time you get that chance, I recommend you do it! Jared Lovejoy and Donna Laslo (only unmasked in order to speak to the crowd beforehand) explained at the start that there will be a winter movie line-up. I know it’s pricey to spend $15 per ticket and $6 or $7ish for popcorn when there are cheaper options on our home screens, but wow, I can’t tell you how good it felt after all this time!

The festivities continue.

This afternoon, Rosedanie Cadet teaches an art class for kids at West Beach Farm for F.E.A.S.T.’s entry in Rosario Resort’s Annual Festival of Trees (must pre-register). Tonight is the last performance of It’s a Wonderful Life, presented as a radio broadcast at The Grange by The Actors’ Theater of Orcas Island at 7:30 p.m.

On Wednesday and Thursday evenings, the Orcas Center will be live-streaming two performances by Orcas Dance Collective. Winter Wonderland and Nutcracker: Kingdom of Sweets, directed and choreographed by Stephanie Moss. While they are open in person only to the friends and families of the performers, they will be available for public viewing at www.orcascenter.org on the night of the shows, where the homepage will turn into a livestream event when they begin. I can’t wait. I love watching people dance.

Finally, the lovely Orcas Choral Society will be singing again for us. This time it will be carols on Thursday at 3 p.m. in front of the Island Market.

May your days be merry and bright!

Edee writes a local blog called Life on Orcas Island (www.lifeonorcasisland.com).