Sara Anne Donelly

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Caribou's Kevin McCartney Presses His Case For Elevating a Humble Household Tool

1 week ago | downeast.com | Sara Anne Donnelly |Sara Anne Donelly

On episode 54 of the YouTube series “Kevin Talks Irons,” Kevin McCartney and a few friends try lighting an 1898 gasoline clothes iron on the porch of his Caribou bed-and-breakfast. The device spits flames from both ends and briefly ignites an ironing board before being rushed back to the safety of a trivet.
Everything's Squared Away in Betsey Telford-Goodwin’s Antique-Quilt Shop

3 weeks ago | downeast.com | Sara Anne Donnelly |Sara Anne Donelly

Betsey Telford-Goodwin didn’t know much about quilts when an acquaintance in Massachusetts asked her to hunt around for some antique textiles from the American West to decorate her house. It was 1987, and Telford-Goodwin and her first husband had recently moved from the Boston area to Colorado.
Fabric Collages Allow a Former Quilter to Cut Loose

1 month ago | downeast.com | Sara Anne Donnelly |Sara Anne Donelly

Over 30 years working as an environmental scientist and planner, quilting had been Judy Gates’s creative outlet. But in 2020, the medium had her feeling boxed in. “I wanted a way to still use fabric without trying to force myself into cutting pieces a certain way or following a certain pattern,” she says.
A Hebron Resident's High-Voltage Holiday Spectacle Stops Traffic

Nov 25, 2024 | downeast.com | Sara Anne Donnelly |Sara Anne Donelly

Every Thanksgiving, Dan Powell gathers with his family and about a hundred friends and acquaintances for a “Lights On” party. Powell, whose round face and bushy brown beard recall a boyish Santa Claus, serves hot cocoa and candy canes, then corrals the group for a Clark Griswold–style lighting reveal. “We count down from 10 in true Griswold fashion,” says Powell, who announces the event to followers of his exterior-illumination adventures on Facebook.
Does the Threat of Industrialization Still Loom Over the East Coast’s Largest Undeveloped Island?

Oct 25, 2024 | downeast.com | Sara Anne Donnelly |Sara Anne Donelly

Sears Island is a wooded, egg-shaped piece of land in Penobscot Bay, about the size of New York City’s Central Park. Connected to the mainland via causeway, the island could provide commercial access to one of Maine’s few deepwater harbors, but it remains, improbably, uninhabited and undeveloped.
In Veazie, A Grower of Giant Gourds Confronts Hefty Challenges

Oct 23, 2024 | downeast.com | Sara Anne Donnelly |Sara Anne Donelly

Sarah Whitty’s entire .15-acre Veazie yard is devoted to growing freakishly large fruits.
A Bridgton Artist’s Expressive Gourd Carvings Speak Volumes

Oct 9, 2024 | downeast.com | Sara Anne Donnelly |Sara Anne Donelly

Every year, around Halloween, sculptor William Janelle would earn a little extra money carving faces on gourds in front of crowds at shopping centers, theme parks, and fall festivals. It wasn’t really his thing.
South Portland Maker Nate Garrett’s Fish Prints Are Reeling In Fans

Sep 16, 2024 | downeast.com | Sara Anne Donnelly |Sara Anne Donelly

It took Nate Garrett four years to find his pogie person. A practitioner of the Japanese art of gyotaku, in which a fish acts as a printing plate, Garrett wanted to honor the important role pogies play as bait, animal feed, and fertilizer. But while he had fishmongers and fishermen who’d call him when they received, say, an especially fine salmon, tuna, or striped-bass specimen, he’d yet to make inroads with someone willing to part with some pogies, which are subject to strict quotas in Maine.
This Durham Home Is Maine’s First Bird-Safe Residential Building

Aug 23, 2024 | downeast.com | Sara Anne Donnelly |Sara Anne Donelly

The moment Jeannette and Derek Lovitch laid eyes on their 78 acres of woods and wetlands, in Durham, they knew they’d found their bird sanctuary. “It’s lowland with a lot of cherry trees, a habitat that’s really good for birds,” Derek says. “We wanted to live where the birds already were.” The Lovitches are biologists and the owners of Freeport Wild Bird Supply, where picture windows frame a small native-plant garden and feeders that attract dozens of birds a day.