HOT SUN COOKS UP A JOUR DE SWEAT

Temperatures, which reached nearly 100 degrees Saturday afternoon in Ste. Genevieve -- as evidenced by this thermometer -- added some real heat to the 29th annual Jour de Fete in Ste. Genevieve.

Jean Hollingsworth weaved baskets from pine needles during the Jour de Fete in Ste. Genevieve Saturday. A large basket can take over a month to finish.

STE. GENEVIEVE -- Shade was the thing most in demand Saturday at Missouri's largest arts and crafts festival.

Ste. Genevieve's annual Jour de Fete became the Jour de Sweat as temperatures of nearly 100 degrees and a smoldering sun had people shopping mostly for ways to keep cool.

The estimated attendance of 30,000 was about normal, but a spokeswoman at the Great River Road Interpretive Center said the crowd there seemed to thin in mid-afternoon.

No reports of problems caused by heat exhaustion were made to police or to the festival information center.

The festival concludes today with a continuation of the crafts demonstrations and sales of arts and crafts, and a car show at the Knights of Columbus Hall, 600 Market St.

One of the shadiest and most popular places in town Saturday was the exhibit provided by the World Bird Sanctuary in St. Louis. A Eurasian eagle owl, the largest nocturnal avian predator in the world, perched on Mike Zeloski's gloved hand.

Though huge, the bird weighs only 3 1/2 pounds, Zeloski told the assemblage.

These owls have been known to attack and kill small deer, but this one, nicknamed Caution, was calm.

"We get them as young birds and raise them," explained volunteer Samantha Ruffini. "They are used to us. Otherwise they couldn't deal with this."

The purpose of the organization is to provide education about wild birds, particularly those threatened with extinction. It also rehabilitates injured birds and returns them to the wild.

Another cool spot was the yard behind the historic Felix Valle house, where craftspeople were at work making brooms, baskets and weaving.

Jean Hollingsworth of Ferguson was there in a leather Native American dress to sell her coiled baskets made of pine needles and raffia.

The art of coiling predates pottery, she said, and the baskets originally produced were used for cooking and carrying water. The Seminole, Cherokee and Choctaw tribes were the chief practitioners, along with African slaves on the East Coast.

During the Civil War, these skills were passed along to Southern white women, who incorporated weaving designs called "Teneriffe."

Hollingsworth and her husband hunt for the pine needles in coastal areas of Florida and Georgia. Her baskets, which are decorative, sell for up to $300.

Ed Haid was at the festival to sell rocks. They're unusual rocks: green selenite from Australia, iron pyrite from Peru, pyrite worm casts from Ohio, sulfur crystals on quartz from Sicily.

Half his customers are collectors, the other half simply like the way the rocks look, Haid said.

He collects many of the rocks himself: geodes from Northeast Missouri, quartz from Mount Ida in Arkansas.

Some people buy quartz for its supposed healing qualities. "I don't know whether it works or not," Haid said.

But can it keep you cool?