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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Goderich Signal-Star, 1981-07-22, Page 15Del Geddes of RR6 Goderich will display her leatherwork at the annual Festival of Arts and Crafts in Court House Park this weekend. The leatherwork includes belts, purses, wallets, guitar straps, watchbands,and key cases. Also shown here are a variety of belt buckles which she sells to go along with her belts. (Photo by Joanne Buchanan) Festival features Del will display her leatherwork BY JOANNE BUCHANAN Despite the fact that Del Geddes of R.R. 6 Goderich holds down a full-time job and has -a family of nine children, including two sets of twins, she still manages to find the hours she needs forr her leatherwork. hobby. "Everybody has to have a hobby. I find mine very relaxing," she says. Del will' be displaying and selling her leatherwork at Goderich's Festival of Arts and Crafts this weekend. She 'took up her hobby about 10 years ago and has had a . booth at the Festival for the last seven years'. . Del's work includes belts, handbags, wallets, eye glass cases, watch bands, guitar straps and key rings. Working with leather is just something Del always had in her mind that she would like to try. One day while shopping in London, she picked up a kit that helped her get started and over the years,: she has picked up the extra tools she has needed as she gets more involved in her work. She buys raw leather from various tanneries in London, Toronto and Acton. Then she cuts out the shapes she needs; stamps or tools on her designs; and dyes the finished products. She uses a special heavy duty sewing machine for those items which need sewing. (although in the beginning she did all her sewing by hand ). Some items, like the handbags and wallets, are laced together with strips of leather. Del enjoys the • stamping and tooling processes best because they offer the. chance to be creative. Tooling takes longer and she only does this process on special request for a more personalized product. Del says her belts usually sell the best. She even makes them for The Old Mill at R.R. 1 Blyth. She buys her buckles from Waisted Belts in Toronto and lets people choose their4 ovwg. These can then be snapped on. She° also has special money belts with hidden compartments: Del can turn out a stamped belt in 10. minutes but a tooled belt would take much longer. She works away even while manning her display at the Festival and at the other fairs and shows she attends. "People like to stop and ask you questions when, they see you working on something," she says. "A lot of people ask me if I use real leather or if it's plastic. I just tell them to smell it and see." Cowhide is the leather most used by Del, although she has tried all types. Belt leather costs her $4 per square foot. When she first took up her hobby, it cost $1.85 per square foot. While she doesn't lose money on her hobby, she says she isn't getting rich either. It is difficult to put a price on one's time and creativity. That's why a hobby must be something a person really enjoys.. Del has been busy for the past week getting stocked up for the Goderich Festival. Whenever she gets behind, her children help her with some of the • processes such as lacing. • Del will' be the only crafter specializing in leatherwork at the Goderich Festival which is set up in Court House Park, There are 52 arts and crafts persons altogether, most of them from out of'•town, and their work will include knitting, metal sculp- ture, ceramics, woodburning, jewelry, paintings, sewing and woodworking. Several non-profit groups and clubs will have promotional displays on the east side of the park as well. And there will dlso be an art and photography gallery in the park featuring local work. The Garden Club will set up a flower show in the Court House and the mer- chants will be holding their sidewalk sale's around The Square. . ' Blind folk dispel misconceptions BY JOANNE BUCHANAN There are many misconceptions about blindness and blind people. Susan Bell of Goderich, who is herself classified as legd'lly blind, hopes to dispel some of these misconceptions with the help of a display at the annual Festival of Arts and Crafts in Court House Park this weekend. There will be at least two blind persons and a sighted person manning this display at a 11 times. Located on the east half of The Square, it will be centered out by balloons to attract people's attention. It will feature a large easel with pamphlets about blin- dness and some personal stories by blind people on being blind. Gwen Watson, a blind woman from Clinton; will write people's names for them in braille. The display will also feature various crafts made by blind. people ('to show that the blind can do things', explains Susan) and various aids used by blind people such as bra ille clock s, kitchen gadgets, etc. Perhaps the most important feature of the display will be a set of six different eye glasses donated by Susan's father, Reg Bell, Goderich optometrist. Each set of glasses has been made up to.represent a different type of blindness and people will be invited to try them on and then go through a series of 'life skills` to see how well they can function. Many people think blindness means total blackout but the glasses will prove otherwise. They represent central vision loss which is like only being able to see out of part of each eye; retinitds pigmentosis which is like looking through pin holes; cataracts which make everything look fuzzy; total blindness; diabetic retinopathy; and optimic glioma. Since Susan started carrying a white cane which advertises the fact that she is blind, She has discovered different at- titudes from sighted people. She finds th em to be either one extreme or the other. "They are either overly caring or they won't come near you," she says. She has also found that people talk louder to blind people. "I guess they think when your sight goes, your hearing goes too." And she has overheard' children asking their parents questions like: 'If she is blind, why are her eyes open?' and 'If she is blind, why does she turn her head?' She hopes to answer questions like this with her display at the arts and crafts festival. "People will be able to try on blindness for themselves (with the glasses)," she Ton to page -2 en is pro BY STEPHANIE LEVESQUE At least one student has a summer job that he describes as being so ideal, he could not have designed a better one for • himself. Nineteen -year-old Ken Wood of Goderich is spending the summer programming computers. Specifically, he is employed with the Huron County Board of Education office in Clinton as an Experience '81 stu- dent. tudent. . His first project was to update the teachers' salary grid used by the board for salary 'negotiations. He, is currently pro- ' ro ` gramming the total cost of teachers' salaries depending on increases allotted. Ken is working his way through universi rammin _ corn ty, having just completed Grade 13 at the Goderich District High School with an overailEaverage of 96 per cent. In the fall, he will be entering Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. In April of this year, Ken received word from the university that he had been ac- cepted: He will take general courses for the cust two years and in his third year he will decide his major. His leanings are towards math or computers. With his overall average, Ken was of course, an Ontario scholar. Ken said he chose Harvard because there is no university in Canada which allows him to take general courses the first two years of university. He added that Godericth 123 YEAR -29 looking at the situation practically, a Har- vard arvard degree would carry a lot of weight. When' he is finished his four years at Harvard, Ken would like to come back to Canada. He was born in Manitoba, but has moved around a lot as his father is a United Church minister, presently at Victoria Street United Church in Goderich. Rev: and Mrs. John Wood also have three other - children and Mrs. Wood is a teacher at Goderich District High School. ° Ken has been working with computers since Grade 10. tie saidbecause he was in- terested in learning how to work with com- puters, his teachers allowed him extra time with the computer. Ken said the cur - tern rets computer pro + school are advanced and noted the ' e is are learn- ing more now. Ken also has tithe to enjoy the carper, as he has set up a bio -rhythm program. The program is not unlike horoscopes and Ken refers to the bio -rhythm program as the "scientific version". He adds they are about as reliable as the horoscopes found in numerous newspapers and magazines. Earlier this year, the bio -rhythm pro- gram was used as a fund-raising project at Ken's schooL Other plans for Ken include sending ar- ticles into computer magazines. He has presently written two 'versions of a Turn to page 2A' • ' SIGNAL WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 1981 STA SECOND SECTION Kids at the Kin Carnival Leander. Campbell, 6, of Goderich drives a plane -there's nothing to it Kim Dawson, Mary Jo Collins 'and Lisa Harris prepare for take -off (Photos by Joanne Buchanan) Victoria Whalen, 6, of Goderich has fun on the merry-go-round � 1'1g1�C1 l edard. 7. of (lode-tieh ties agate candy floss