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Plowshares Craftsfair to Offer Goods, Food, and Entertainment to More than 3,000 This Weekend

Syracuse Peace Council Facebook
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Syracuse Peace Council

A unique multi-cultural crafts show arrives just in time for the first weekend of December with food and entertainment. Regardless if you’re planning on doing some holiday shopping or not, the 47th Annual Plowshares Crafts-fair and Peace Festival could be a summer flashback.

“Plowshares is the indoor Westcott Street Fair.”

That’s Lanny Freshmen, an organizer of the event committee. He says the festival draws more than 3,000 people in two days.

 “It also is stuff that is made by hand - made by a person - and you see the person. There’s just such a difference in that from buying a piece of something that was made by, unfortunately, sometimes children in Bangladesh or people who are being exploited in rural China.”

Freshmen says there will be 110 crafters selling goods such as pottery, crocheted clothing, and wood-working, and 15 community groups at the fair. Diane Chepko Sade from Mexico creates realistic-looking dragonflies in fused glass.  She also incorporates pictures of hand-drawn animals found in ancient caves.

 “I actually just drop the powder on a flat piece of glass and then I move it around with a paintbrush to make the form of the horse. And then, when I get the form that I want, I fire it to 1,290 degrees and that melts the powdered glass into the sheet glass with the picture that I’ve copied from an image that was done by early man on the walls of caves.”

Credit peacecouncil.net / Syracuse Peace Council
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Syracuse Peace Council
A yard sign for the Plowshares Craftsfair

It’s that kind of personal dynamic with the crafters and artists that Freshman claims makes the Plowshares experience meaningful. Other items include jewelry, metal and stone sculptures and decorative objects.  It happens this weekend at Nottingham High School, 3100 East Genesee Street in Syracuse. Saturday hours are from 10 to 5 and Sunday from 11 to 5.  Their website is peacecouncil.net/plowshares.   

John Smith has been waking up WAER listeners for a long time as our Local Co-Host of Morning Edition with timely news and information, working alongside student Sportscasters from the Newhouse School.