This weekend’s Kris Kringle Arts and Crafts Show will have plenty of new faces and unfamiliar vendors selling their wares.
Patricia Patterson, program director at The Blind Center of North Carolina, said organizers invited several new vendors to the annual fundraiser.
“We have jewelry, gourds, felting with alpaca wool, a lot of sewing. It’s a good variety,” she said.
The show will also have a variety of baked goods available, starting as low as 50 cents each. The lunch menu includes meatball sandwiches, chicken-cheese soup and pimento cheese sandwiches, ranging from $2 to $5.
The center’s gift shop will be open. One of the newest handmade items added is the paracord bracelet.
“One of our clients, Doris, learned to do it in six days,” Patterson said. “They’re new and trendy and they’re $5 a piece, a nice, good, inexpensive gift for a young child … or even an old person.”
Proceeds from the shop and the show support ongoing programs at the center and will contribute to current efforts of funding a computer center with software and applications that will allow clients to listen to books online.
The Blind Center of North Carolina has common goals for the services offered.
“It is a social outlet. It keeps them from being shut in and they get to use their hands and their minds and socialize,” Patterson said.
The center is always looking for more volunteers. The largest ongoing fundraiser is a beads project.
“Hampton Arts has given us tubes to fill the beads and they’re paying us for that,” Patterson said. “As soon we get a lot of money together, we’re going to have computer classes and we’re working on a program with iPhones.”
The beads program is held weekdays, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
The craft show will be Saturday, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Sunday, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, call 946-6208.