BETTIE KNOLL KNOWS ANGELS

Bettie Knoll can talk to the angels anytime she wants. After all, she created them.

Knoll, a special officer with the Cape Girardeau Police Department, started making angels for friends and family a year ago.

They encouraged her to go public and sell her creations at craft fairs.

She participated in a local craft fair last spring and will be among hundreds of crafters who will exhibit their creations this weekend at the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri's 26th annual Christmas Arts & Crafts Bazaar.

The craft show is one of four such shows that will be held in Cape Girardeau Saturday and Sunday. (See related story).

There is an admission charge at the Arts Council's bazaar. Doors open at 10 a.m. both days.

The pre-Thanksgiving crafts shows annually attract huge crowds. Some 12,000 people visited the crafts bazaar at the Show Me Center last year. Some crafters return year after year.

This will be Knoll's first experience in selling at such a large crafts show. But she is familiar with the Arts Council's show, having previously helped out at the annual event.

Knoll has dabbled in crafts for years, taking one craft after another. She has done everything from painting to basket weaving.

"It drives me nuts," she said. "I could probably open a craft shop," she said, reflecting on her many creations over the years.

She doesn't horde her handiwork; most of it, she gives away as gifts.

Knoll enjoys making angels and isn't content with making just one kind. Cardboard cones serve as the bodies for her 8-inch-tall angels. Some have porcelain faces; others are faceless balls.

She has turned tassels and clothes pins into angel ornaments. She uses wooden macrame beads as heads for her smaller angels.

The tassel angels hang easily from rearview mirrors, she said.

She has made black angels -- her favorites -- and cowboy angels. The latter angels have cowboy hats.

"A lot of this I just played around with," said Knoll, explaining how she came up with some of her creations.

She has thought about making police angels in light of the fact that she works at the police department.

She sat at her kitchen table recently, surrounded by some of her finished angels as well as wings, heads, halos and other parts for yet-to-be-created angels. She sticks to her hobby, relying on a glue gun to help hold things together.

Her hobby is a hit with her four cats, who love to camp out in the middle of it all.

Knoll wonders aloud if her angels will sell. Having previously given away her handiwork, it is hard for her to envision selling them.

But having settled into the craft, Knoll wouldn't mind if her hobby takes wing.