Here on the table of Handmade with love by Hope is a pink lemonade cow crochet plush toy. And there are some chickens, frogs and monkey plush toys. Crocheting them makes people happy, and that in turn makes Hope Hopkins happy.
“These chickens are always popular,” said Hopkins who was at the Cabrini Farmers Market Saturday. “People love the chickens.”
Then there are the cows.
“My cows are always pretty popular, so today I brought a pink lemonade cow,” she said. “I'm trying to do fruit things with cows right now. These are always popular, the little cows," she said.
She also makes yip-yip bags.
“A lot of people like to put them on their rearview mirror, and you could throw in your ChapStick, change, you know, whatever. They're popular too,” she said.
She points out the little birds on a swing.
“I actually have a Flamingo hanging on the review mirror in my car,” said Hopkins, who started crocheting when she was a child.
"My grandmother, my granny, taught me how to crochet when I was, probably, 8 years old. And I've been crocheting my whole life,” said Hopkins who also crochets blankets, doilies and other things like that.
About six months ago, she started making crochet plush toys when her mother wasn’t feeling well.
“She loves monkeys, so I got this idea. ‘OK, I'm going to make her a stuffed monkey.’ And it started from there and it exploded,” she said.
Making crochet plush toys can be complicated but it depends on what it being made.
“Some of them are more complicated than others and of course you have to stuff the little pieces and some of them you have to sew the pieces together,” said Hopkins.
She recently started selling them at the Cabrini Farmers Market because some of her friends are also vendors at area farmers markets.
“I thought, well, that looks like fun because you get to meet people and get out. So I started searching for markets locally,” said Hopkins.
She got in touch with Cabrini Farmers Market organizer Mary Rogers who invited her to come out.
Hopkins' original plan was to crochet some items and donate them in memory of her little sister Faith Manley who was murdered three years ago.
"She was a respiratory therapist. She worked in the hospital in Lafayette. So that was what originally got me started doing this,” said Hopkins about selling items at the market.
Hopkins also works from home and she is in school studying to become a professional counselor.
“It's just a side thing I do just because I enjoy making stuff,” she said. “It makes people happy. It makes me happy.”
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