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Small Crafts Advisory

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By DAVID SOMMER, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 11, 2008

Updated: 02/10/2008 09:11 pm

DADE CITY - The quilters long since had rested their fingers Saturday while Brooksville-based cane weaver Kathleen Barnes soldiered on, demonstrating her craft for fairgoers at the Pioneer Florida Museum and Village's Farm Festival and 18th Annual Quilt Show.

"Most everything I get are family pieces," Barnes said, as she restored a customer's heirloom chair.

Fairgoer Wayne Miller of Michigan, who described himself as "a snowbird and proud of it," wanted to know why Barnes had started step six without finishing step five in what is known as a "seven-step hole-caning."

"Because I can," Barnes replied.

"I would get so confused," Miller said, adding that as a part-time caner himself, he was impressed with Barnes' weaving skills and her ability to find antique chairs worthy of restoration.

"Everything I find, somebody else has already tried to restore," he said. "They don't prepare them right for restoration and when the cane tightens up they crack the joints."

It takes about 10 to 12 hours to weave a new cane seat into the average antique chair, Barnes said. Usually, she will stop after about two hours; on Saturday, though, Barnes pushed through back pain and sore fingers to keep the demonstration going.

Over and over, she explained to the curious how the thin cane strips must be soaked in water to make them pliable enough to weave onto a chair. "It tightens up when it dries," she told a woman.

Outside the quilting and caning exhibition hall, teams of big draft horses, some from as far away as Pennsylvania and Texas, competed at dragging a truck fitted with about 4,500 pounds of lead weights sitting on a brakelever.

Most of the horses were Belgians, said Curtis Dunn, down for a Florida vacation from his native New Hampshire along with friend Karin Eisenhaure.

The couple often attend horse-pulls up North, where teams compete at dragging sleds weighed down with logs, Dunn said.

"We have a different kind of horse-pulls up home," he said. "This is the first time I've ever been to a Florida horse-pull."

Inside the Pioneer Florida Museum's main building, 7-year-old Kevin Komanowski of Town 'N Country flitted from exhibit to exhibit, telling his mom, Cynthia, what he thought was cool and what he thought was not.

An antique porcelain doll in an old stroller got a thumbs-down. An 1885 Linotype machine used to cast lines of type in hot lead for use in the printing of newspapers was neat, the boy said.

What impressed Kevin the most on his weekend excursion back in time from his Tampa subdivision?

It was the "big hills" around San Antonio and St. Leo.

"I've never seen hills before," he said.

Reporter David Sommer can be reached at (727) 815-1087 or dsommer@tampatrib.com.

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