A long train stopped me before I could get to Chatham Street for the Lazy Daze Arts & Crafts Festival. As the boxcars clattered over the tracks, bits of zydeco music drifted through from the Amazing Spaces stage. After the train passed and the crowd moved over the tracks, the scent of funnel cakes was carried to us on the breeze. The Town of Cary, as usual, had delivered on one perfect, sunny, puffy-cloud, light breeze, hot-but-not-too-hot summer day.

Part of the reason I’m drawn to arts and crafts shows is that I have not a single artistic bone in my body. Seeing the artists creating masterpieces in the time it takes me to walk down one Lazy Daze row of booths is both impressive and humbling. Henna painting, pottery, quilts, woven rugs, handbags, jewelry … the kaleidoscope of things I can’t do is staggering.

Kay Mowery and Janice Stevens of the Colored Pencil Society of America probably can’t relate. As I strolled by, they were drawing lifelike, photograph-quality pictures of flowers and landscapes with the simple tools my children have to buy each year as part of their school supply list. While Stevens has always woven art into her life, Mowery said he got his start in an unlikely place: the conference room. “I used to sit in boring meetings and scribble,” he said. Now, he combines pastels and colored pencils to create landscapes and meets with other CPSA artists to critique and share ideas.

“You can get so much color, depth and originality from colored pencils,” Stevens said.

Color and depth leapt out from featured poster artist Ann Harwell’s quilts. Like me, she grew up in the presence of artists. Unlike me, it rubbed off. “I have always sewn; my mother taught me,” Harwell said. “And my uncle is an architect. He taught me about drafting tools.” Harwell then passed her artistic skills down to her youngest son, who graduated from N.C. State University this past spring. He does three-dimensional modeling for video games.

Down the street a bit, Joe Edwards of Whiterock Studio was just starting on a pottery “cat” fish, complete with pointy ears, whiskers and fins made by pressing the bumpy lid of a marker into the clay. He put the whole thing together in less than three minutes on the table at the front of his booth, talking the whole time.

“The tools are very complicated and sophisticated,” he said jokingly, as he used tops of markers, paintbrush handles and his fingers to form the clay. While Edwards reminded onlookers that he’d practiced more than 30 years, he said the basics were easy. I bet. My only foray into pottery was a structurally unsound vase I made in second grade that broke in the kiln.

Even the Hands-On History activity sponsored by the Page-Walker Arts & History Center —”Make a Corn Husk Doll” — was fairly complex. While I looked on with David Evans of Raleigh, his daughter, Adeline, 6, folded wet corn husks with the help of volunteers.

Evans hadn’t been to Lazy Daze before. “My wife is in New York this weekend, so I thought this would be a good thing for Adeline and me to do,” he said. Adeline seemed both focused and adept; her doll looked just like the page of instructions.

Mastewal Gezahegan and Laura Chavez of Cary weren’t trying to make art, just enjoy it. As they ate ice cream and listened to music, Chavez said she had bought some Native American music and Russian nesting dolls.

“I’m looking for art for my house,” said Gezahegan. “Lazy Daze has interesting things you wouldn’t find anywhere else.”

She said she has been coming to the festival for years because she can walk to it from her house.

Nearby, Eddie Sanders, 8, of Cary, was scaling the “Top of the Rock” rock wall. He brought his parents, Eddie and Janeen Sanders, to Lazy Daze “for fun.”

“My favorites are the face painting and lemonade,” he said.

As I sipped my own tub of lemonade on this made-to-order, end-of-summer day, I felt lucky to be in the presence of so many talented artists. Even if my own special talent is simply to enjoy it.