Happy Crafters spins an online business into a bustling hangout for creatives. When shopping at Happy Crafters, a small shop on Morgantown’s Don Knotts Boulevard, it isn’t unusual to meet crafters on pilgrimages from other states. “People come in from eight hours out of town,” says Chelsea Hellen, Happy Crafter’s brand manager. “This is one of their stops when they…
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Already a revered world music pioneer when profiled in 2009, steel drum innovator Ellie Mannette lived out his creative and productive last quarter-century in West Virginia. Morgantown native Chanler Bailey had an epiphany in the spring of 2002. He had traveled to the second European Steel Band Festival on the Mediterranean coast of France with his mentor, panman Ellie Mannette….
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Allegheny Restoration and Builders of Morgantown practices deep preservation in West Virginia and on the national stage. Before machines made windows, carpenters did. They shaped horizontal wooden pieces, called rails, to fit perfectly into vertical stiles. They cut rabbets all around where the panes would seat. They fashioned delicate muntins to stand between the panes, and they snugged everything together…
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World barbecue champion Luke Darnell talks cartoon pigs, done temperatures, and popped tires. Morgantown native Luke Darnell started barbecuing as a kid, spending hours with his friends tending a smoking hole in the ground at their parents’ summertime pig roasts. “When smoke would start coming out of the ground, we’d have to take a shovel and cover it. We didn’t…
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Morgantown’s Andrew White Guitars isn’t just surviving, it’s thriving. As a West Virginia University sophomore in Spain, Andrew White was constantly reminded to explore the world around him. “When you travel abroad, they tell you, ‘Immerse yourself in the culture. That’s the best way to learn the language,’” White says. He was doing just that when he walked into the…
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