Lisa has had the flu for the last couple of days, but she was feeling a bit better today so we decided to go out to a local craft market we saw advertised in the local paper. Actually it’s odd, because there’s another, much bigger craft market being held in one of the big function halls in town at the same time, but this one was nearby and you never know what you’ll find.

It was being held in the parking lot of one of the newer strip malls – Craig Road Marketplace. We’ve driven past it a number of times, and each time more places seem to be open for business. We’ve seen “opening specials” advertised, and interestingly it seems to have a different collection of merchants than the usual cookie-cutter strip malls that seem to be the standard template. The only thing in common would be the Albertson’s Supermarket and a Bank. Instead of BlockBuster Video and China King III, we have “The Honey Tree” – a Greek diner (!?) and Sushi Ko, which also does Teppan Yaki. And a big surprise: a Goodwill store where we could donate clothes, records, or whatever (not that we have much of that kind of stuff left…)

The craft market was, I guess, the usual: paintings, jewelry, candles, pottery, glass sculpture, a hammer-dulcimer artist – and a wood carver.

We’ve been looking for something to hang on our bathroom wall to keep our balancing whale toy company, and the wood carver had some cool pieces, including a realling interesting one we kind of fell in love with: a branch with lizards crawling around it. Ok, it sounds kind of gross when put like that, but it’s actually charming, and we fell in love with it.

With that task accomplished, we had an early dinner at The Honey Tree, using one of our opening special coupons culled from the weekly coupon book that comes in the mail. The idea of a Greek Diner sounds a bit suspect, but we can now report that the food was cheap, good, and seemed to be relatively authentic if you chose from the greek part of their menu. We will probably go back some time.