Cupcakes, crochet, crafts and Christmas

If there was any sign this weekend that Yellowknifers are ready for Christmas, it could be found at the NJ Macpherson Christmas Craft Show at the school gymnasium Saturday.

Crowds poured into the first of its kind fundraising event for the school that featured 19 vendors selling everything from baking, knitting, sewing painting and fabric arts.

Amanda Pierce and Savannah Alary, co-organizers of the event and members of the school parent advisory committee, said sales from tables to vendors were going to the school's efforts to purchase team jerseys and build a Forest and Nature School outdoor education tent on the school property.

“This is the first time we did one and to raise money for the school,” Pierce said. “Having it as a Christmas market was just due to the timing for our fundraising efforts and was just the way everything fell together. It is just a good chance for people to come out to do some Christmas crafts shopping and to buy local.”

Alary added that she was pleasantly surprised with the turnout on Saturday, noting there were about 40 people waiting to get in.

“We had a great turnout and everything has been great with a lot of people coming through,” she said. “I had wanted to take numbers for how many people came in but there were so many and they kept coming and kept coming. Maybe I will buy a little clicker next time. ”

Among the popular tables for the afternoon was the Cupcake Queen, run by Hayley Frost, a teacher in Behchoko who sells baked items on the side. She said she came to the event with 450 cupcakes of different flavours and they were pretty well sold out within a few hours. Many passersby could be seen stopping by to pick assortments of various flavoured cupcakes in six-packs.

Frost said she came up from Ontario to teach in January and opened Cupcake Queen as a side business.

“I love baking and my best friend is a baker in Ontario, so she has really inspired me to do it,” she said.

“The choosing of cupcakes to create six-packs are what people seem to really like.”

Frost was highly complimentary of the event organizers and said craft sales allow her to mingle with the public in a way that she wouldn't be able to in her day-to-day job.

Another vendor was Carolyn Cronk, owner of Epicure, who sells herbs and spices for the purposes of healthy eating.

“It has been busy right from the beginning with many people lined up at the door saying 'please let me in,'” said Cronk. “It was a really nice way to start the Christmas season.”