Macrame and custom socks at St. Phillip’s weekend market

On weekends St. Phillip’s Plaza at River and Campbell holds a market that is sorta like a crafts fair. Lots of jewelry makers and –you know, the usual suspects. But there were three vendors that caught my eye mostly because they were unusual and I had a personal tie to two of them.

I’ll begin with a confession: I literally own dozens of pairs of socks in every color of the rainbow in light, medium and heavyweight. I haven’t bought new ones lately so perhaps I have recovered from that obsession. But when I saw a booth that had colorful socks on display I stopped to talk with the sock maker, a woman named BJ. It turns out the socks are knit with an antique machine that she uses to hand-crank colorful socks one at a time. Her story is too long for this space, but you can read about how she tracked down one of these sock machines in New Zealand. And about her obsession, too.

And here are a few examples of her one-of-a-kind pairs of socks:

The next confession: Back in the 1960s I lived in San Francisco and was a fairly crafty young lady, as were many of us at that time. I made macrame belts for my young sons and a purse for myself — and I still have these items. But nothing I ever did even came close to the work of Jessica Melrose whose work was displayed in her booth at St. Phillip’s market. She is a professional artist and art teacher who “discovered” macrame about 3 years ago and admits she has almost entirely abandoned her hyper-realistic paintings for the knotty world of macrame. She’s on the left in this photo.

Here are a few examples of her work:

Just down the aisle from the Jessica Melrose was a man selling what I think were imports from Mexico. On display was a hand-crafted metal dragon and rusted metal agaves, which were there on Saturday and gone on Sunday. He also had a lot of what appeared to be Navajo-influenced rugs. It was a colorful booth.

As with all these types of craft fairs, the goal is to lure people into the event and encourage them to shop at the stores and restaurants surrounding the site. At St. Phillip’s Plaza there is a huge outdoor courtyard filled with tables plus a stage for musicians and/or DJs. Because of the pandemic the patio was partially empty and most of the brunch crowd was under 35. And, sadly, there was not much social distancing and mask usage was not consistent.

With the rapid rate of Covid 19 vaccinations in Arizona we should reach herd immunity within a month or so and I assume that the dining plaza will then be jam-packed. It’s a charming location–although this photo does not do it justice.

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We’ve had some rain, but not much. The TV Weather guy said that May and June should be rainier than normal. I hope so.