Chester - On the last Sunday before Christmas, no one was in a hurry at the annual Chester Holiday Market - just the way they planned it.
"This experience is so different from all other holiday shopping experiences," said Lori Warner, a printmaker whose gallery sits on Main Street and who organizes the market with Jody Reilly, owner of Simon's Marketplace next door. Regulars know each other, the business owners and the vendors, stopping frequently to chat or grab something to eat.
As the winter edition of the town's Sunday market wrapped up, the atmosphere was half farmer's market and half last-minute, quirky gift mecca - without the mob scene - with many looking to snag smaller gifts as stocking stuffers and stroll the center of town on an unseasonably warm day.
At Warner's gallery late Sunday morning, Laura Day of East Haddam was watching a black patent leather handbag be wrapped impeccably in silver paper and tied off with a white ribbon. Half of her family has birthdays right before Christmas, she said. This time of year, she's a gift-giving professional.
Warner also sells ceramics, glass items, and jewelry among other unique artworks. For the holidays, a metal tree in the window displayed handmade porcelain ornaments and white crocheted jellyfish.
"You'll never find things that I sell in the malls," she said.
Options for stocking-sized gifts at the market included goat's milk soaps and soy candles from Colchester-based Mayflower Soaps, with scents like sweet orange, cranberry fig, lavender, and spruce - and Ledyard's Hidden Brook Gardens, offering in-season produce like celery root and radishes, plus mason jars of sauerkraut, hot sauce and apple butter.
Just past these vendors, David Brown displayed miniature prints of his original paintings of roosters and fields of flowers - plus "fishmas" cards for a dollar each, featuring hooked fish dangling from red and green ribbons alongside ornaments.
As the owner of Old Saybrook's Hay House Farm, Brown was also offering jams with flavors like gingered apple, kiwi, hot pepper and "really" hot pepper - and autumn olive, which Brown insisted has nothing to do with olives and tastes more like "somewhere between cranberry and plum."
Noreen Saunders of Killingworth had already gifted neighbors, her mail carrier and her bus driver with a jar each of the stuff by the time she stopped by to pick up more on Sunday. Her family's tradition is to purchase gifts made solely in the USA - bonus points for local goods - a task that she said proves trickier than one might imagine but is well worth the effort.
"Better than a Dunkin' Donuts gift card," she said.
Brown said he has been participating in the market since its inception nine years ago.
"It's why I get this spot," he said, referring to the piece prime real estate in front of Chester's unofficial hub, Simon's Marketplace.
Reilly describes Simon's as an "upscale general store," for lack of a more accurate term for what the space offers. That would be everything from gourmet lunch - on Sunday, cauliflower gratin, roasted beets and salmon filets were on the menu - to fresh organic coffee, mugs and gag gifts to candles and journals, along with an extensive collection of greeting cards.
A lack of what Reilly called "big shopping" in the area means that the Holiday Market's customers tend to be those buying last-minute gifts who don't want to battle the crowds and chaos of more commercial venues.
A little ways down Main Street at Mia DiDio's display table for her sea glass jewelry - handmade and collected locally from the Long Island Sound - Pat Maty was paying for one of DiDio's most prized works: a thick, open-ended silver chain from which dangled two smooth pendants, one pale blue and the other pale pink.
DiDio launched Fairfield Seaglass ("Mermaid Enhanced, Eco Rejuvenated") over the summer. At her first Holiday Market, she said her earrings, necklaces and bracelets have proven to be popular gifts - and, in the case of Maty, who had already finished her shopping, a good option for a little holiday self-indulgence.
"Merry Christmas to me!" Maty said, turning to depart, but not before DiDio could offer some advice:
"It looks fabulous on black, by the way," she said.
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