Date: Fri 15-Nov-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Illustration: C

Location: A11

Quick Words:

Manna-Holiday-Festival-crafts

Full Text:

(feature on Linda Manna, Holiday Festival crafts show chair & crafter,

11/15/96)

Holiday Festival Crafts Show Co-Chairman-

For Linda Manna, Creating Crafts Is A Full-Circle, Year-Round Love

(with photos)

BY SHANNON HICKS

With three weeks left before the eighth annual Newtown Holiday Festival,

applications are arriving at a feverish pace at the home of Newtown resident

and craftsman extraordinaire Linda Manna. Mrs Manna, along with fellow Newtown

crafter Terry Ferris, is a coordinator of the craft show event for this year's

festival. Always a fun attraction of the day-long event, the craft show will

be in the gymnasium of Edmond Town Hall in Newtown.

"At last year's show, they weren't all handmade items. So people were a little

disappointed, I think they were looking for more quality craftsmanship," Linda

said recently.

This year, the craft show will present 44 hand-picked crafters; 31 spots have

been filled to date, and applications continue to arrive daily by the

truckload. Certainly a large help was the advertisement Linda put in the trade

magazine Crafter's Digest this year, the first time the Newtown show has been

featured in the magazine.

"We're not going to have any problem filling the 44," Linda said last week,

seated comfortably in the airy room of her Head O' Meadow home that connects

to her greenhouse and overlooks a sloping backyard.

"We have specifically said things have to be handcrafted, they can't be

commercially made. We're also trying not to have too many duplications,

either," she continued. Linda, who runs Windy Hill Crafts, for instance,

specializes in handmade wreaths using dried flowers she grows in her gardens.

There will be one other crafter offering wreaths at the Newtown show next

month, someone who creates the ornaments using a different style, and these

will be the only booths featuring wreaths, to avoid oversaturation.

Co-coordinator Terry Ferris, who runs Farm House Favorites and has a stand in

Newtown during the fall months, will also have a booth at the show.

Plans for the festival show began falling into place about two months ago.

Linda had been asked following last year's festival show if she would be

interested in chairing this year's edition, and she was contacted by festival

chairmen in August to confirm her interest in the 1996 crafts show.

Windy Hill Crafts is a year-round occupation - one of two - for Linda. January

is her only quiet month. By February, she is starting seedlings inside; during

March and April, she visits herb farms and hits sales for baskets and other

supplies; and after the last frost, the plants are put in the ground outside.

After May, she says, the rest of the year continues non-stop, between growing,

harvesting, drying and using her plants and vines to develop the beautiful

wreaths, baskets and wall hangings she puts her name behind.

Linda's first show is always Bridgewater's fair, held annually in August.

Between that time and the Sunday the Newtown Festival show rolls around, Linda

is booked solid, sometimes doing more than one show a weekend, with 20 shows

worked between the two.

Fortunately, she is sometimes helped out at shows by her daughter, Michelle,

who was working with Linda in her booth at the St Rose Craft Fair in Newtown

last weekend, as a matter of fact. Michelle also lends a hand during the

creative process. Linda and her husband, Bob, also have two sons, Rob and Lee,

both of whom work in landscaping.

While Linda is responsible for much of what goes into her crafts, she

considers shows "a joint venture." She does the growing, and most of the

creating, for instance; Bob sometimes cuts out wooden pieces which she

decorates around (birdhouses, arrangements, etc). And while Linda will drive

to a show with her car filled with items to be displayed and sold, Bob follows

with Linda's display racks in his pickup truck.

"It's nice... it's a fun thing to do together," she said.

Bob and Linda moved into their Head O' Meadow home in 1975, with three young

children at the time (Michelle, Rob and Lee have since grown up and moved

out). When Bob asked what Linda would like to do to the house, the first thing

out of her mouth was "a chopping block for the kitchen." Ironically, the same

night they signed the papers for their new home, they found an ad in the

newspaper for an old chopping block out of an old butcher's shop. Bob and

Linda called and told the seller they would take it, sight unseen.

The second thing Linda wanted was a greenhouse, which they built.

Four years later, Linda was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Fortunately, the

greenhouse was there.

"It was a great place to go out and start seeds and see things grow. It really

made me feel good. It got me through my 12 weeks of radiation therapy." As her

children grew older, Linda was able to spend more time in the yard, which is

when she began growing perennials and herbs, eventually making things out of

them.

A front room of her beautiful home is a sort of home-showcase. Laden with

wreaths, window dressings, baskets (with and without white lights interwoven),

greeting signs, decorated birdhouses and the like, the room is a testament to

the beautiful craftsmanship Linda sells. Walking into the room is a breath of

fresh air, from the eucalyptus arranged in a double-bottle wine basket to the

assorted wreaths bedecked with the herbs she has grown. On the wall to the

immediate right of the door hangs a window frame adorned with an arrangement

of dried flowers, Bob and Linda's latest joint project. He cuts the wood and

assembles the wooden frames, Linda paints, antiques and decorates the frames.

Linda specializes in year-round wreaths - holiday and herbal - and lighted

baskets. Her work is seen around town during the holiday season: Linda does

the Christmas wreaths for My Place Restaurant and Dunkin' Donuts, both on

Queen Street, among other locations.

She also does plant care, including Christmas decorating, for small companies

and banks throughout lower Fairfield County. She has been doing this, in

addition to pursuing her work through Windy Hill Crafts, since 1983; she

purchased the plant care business, called Inner-Green Interior Landscaping in

1985. Linda purchased the company with 27 existing contracts; by the end of

her first year in business, that number had increased to 60 contracts.

Profitable? Yes. But such a large number of jobs, all of which Linda was

handling on her own, took too much time. Driving time alone took up much of

her day, with clients as far away as Northern Westchester Airport, where Linda

was taking care of Texaco's private hanger. When banks began having financial

problems, having their plants taken care of became considered a luxury they

could no longer afford, so a few contracts were dropped. It was just as well,

because Linda found she was overextending herself, which turned into stress

her children noticed.

"I always live by the motto `Things always work out for the best,'" she said.

"It was almost a good thing the banks ran into trouble, because it forced me

to cut back. One of my sons used to tell me I got too stressed out around the

holidays.

"Now I'm down to a small amount that I can handle myself, and I can service

them better because I'm not so stretched out... so stressed out," she said.

Linda also does gardening projects for LRM, Inc, her sons' landscape

contractor business. "I really keep busy."

Linda's workshop takes up much of the basement level of her house. Her main

work table recently was piled with bouquets of various dried flowers, a barrel

cover hangs on one wall surrounded by wall hangings in assorted states of

creation, shelves are loaded with supplies.

"I like to be creative," Linda contends. That facet of herself has carried

over into the Holiday Festival's planning - the avoidance of having too many

of the same thing within a small area. "I don't like to make six of one thing.

At most, maybe three.

"I like to put a little of my personality into each item."

A self-taught crafter, Linda went through a lot of trial and error to learn

which plants should and should not be used for certain projects. Among the

dozen different plants found in Linda's garden are assorted artemesias, which

she uses for their silver color ("They make good filler in baskets," she

said.); straw flowers; gold and pink yarrow; lavenders; cone flowers; celosia;

different-colored astible; nigella; sedum; blue salvia; a number of roses; and

a ton of Sweet Annie. She also uses, but does not grow, eucalyptus.

"You need to know which perennials will dry well and keep their color," she

said. "One perennial I use a lot of at this time of the year is Sweet Annie,

and Sweet Annie, if you're not careful, can overtake your garden. You could

suddenly wind up with acres and acres of Sweet Annie because it reseeds

itself. You have to ... keep it contained, or it turns out to be a lot of

work.

"And you have to know the right time of year to cut the flowers and to hang

them," she offers as an explanation of a learned experience. The first year

Linda grew Sweet Annie, she learned the hard way why the flower is the last

one to be harvested, after the first frost. The plant went to seed, Linda

said, and she thought it looked perfect, so she cut it. Unfortunately, no one

had told her about the aphids.

"I had hung everything in the garage, and my son came home and he goes `What

are these green things crawling all over everything?!' It was a mess. I had to

hang it all outside and wait for the frost," she recalled with a laugh.

"That's what the frost does: it kills the bugs."

Two years ago, Linda's brother Gary didn't know what to give Linda for her

birthday. A builder by trade, Gary built Linda a gorgeous drying barn in her

backyard, where she keeps all her herbs (including bug-free Sweet Annie).

Having her greenhouse and drying barn, in addition to her full workshop,

allows Linda the enjoyment of handling the full circle of her projects, from

idea through production.

"I get more satisfaction out of the start-to-finish. To start something from

seed and to see the finished product really gives me a lot of satisfaction."

In addition to her wreaths and baskets, Linda also offers shoppers a line of

black wrought ironware from the Pennsylvania Amish, tinware from South

Carolina, and cotton braided rugs that can be ordered to match any color

scheme - all things Linda loves herself but are increasingly difficult to

find.

This is Linda's fifth year involved in the Newtown Holiday Festival. Whether

working for herself or helping to coordinate the Newtown show, she said she

still finds working on her projects relaxing.

"It's not work at all," she said.

Her first involvement was four years ago, when she first applied as a crafter.

With a strong list of requirements Linda and Terry Ferris are looking for -

most importantly handmade, quality pieces - and considering the beautiful work

both women make for their own presentations, this year's show is bound to be

better than ever.