EVERETT — Kristen Boswell was the little kid with the clipboard. The teenager who started a movable smoothie cart to get out of running the family garden. The young woman who climbed the retail and corporate ladder with companies such as Baskin-Robbins, Ann Taylor and Zumiez.
Now that she lives in Everett, Boswell has joined the movement to make Everett a cultural destination.
Her free, monthly Everett Makers Market opened in December, featuring artists and craftsmen selling their functional wares at Basecamp, a space opened by the Everett Music Initiative folks.
The 14-vendor market is open again Saturday afternoon at 1420 Hewitt Ave. Boswell said she expects a good crowd.
“We offer a great opportunity for the local community to meet the people who make the products we sell,” Boswell said. “The market is really a pop-up shop, and we plan some street fairs this summer as well.”
Vendors include a calligrapher, a knitter, a candle maker, a beekeeper, a skin-care specialist, a potter, a glass artist, a watercolorist, a jeweler, a knife craftsman, a coffee roaster, an artisan chocolate maker, a blanket seamstress and Boswell, who makes hanging planters and the equipment for wall gardens.
“We are adding more people and trying to make it fresh each month,” she said. “Our next street market is June 18 out in front of the Sno-Isle Natural Foods Co-op.”
Boswell, 39, and her husband, Matt Keenan, moved to north Everett in 2006 after he got a job as an engineer for Boeing.
She got on with Zumiez, but when the company moved its corporate offices, Boswell found herself at loose ends.
She started her company, Vertical Gardens Northwest, hoping to attract local apartment dwellers to embrace the idea of raising a garden on their small decks.
“We have traveled enough to see how other countries approach agriculture; it’s whatever it takes,” she said.
She designs and builds her hanging gardens for fences or sides of outdoor walls.
Boswell put Vertical Gardens online and she took her equipment to sell at markets out of town. But the appeal of local sales was just too great, she said.
Not only do people in new Everett apartments need vertical gardens, they need places to go to spend their time and money, she said. So, Boswell launched the nonprofit, family-friendly Everett Makers Market.
“Our focus is on emerging artisans, students at Everett Community College and young people who could benefit from a mentor to help market their products,” she said. “We’ve heard from other business owners that the market has helped generate a revenue stream downtown. People shop at the market and then go out to dinner.”
It’s all about community, said Boswell, who donates her time to market the market.
“The Makers Market is community-based commerce. Come and check us out.”
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com.
If you go
Everett Makers Market: 1 to 6 p.m. April 23, 1420 Hewitt Ave. Free parking at the Everpark Garage, kitty corner across the street at 2815 Hoyt Ave. To be considered as a future vendor, email everettmakersmarket@gmail.com. More information is at www.facebook.com/EverettMakersMarket.
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