JOYCE, Wash. — At a tiny shop in the tiny town of Joyce, Teresa Bentley makes everyday magic - by making an everyday cleaning tool. Chances are, the broom hanging in your closet looks nothing like the colorful ones Teresa makes.
“They are functional. They're just really pretty,” said Bentley. “I've actually had somebody tell me that the broom works better than their vacuum cleaner."
Teresa learned the age-old craft of broom making from her uncle in Kentucky. At Wicked Brooms on the Olympic Peninsula she builds brooms using tools handed down by her uncle, and a tying table with a foot-powered wheel to tighten the string as she wraps it around the broom-straw and binds the straw to the handle.
“To me it feels like meditation,” Bentley said.
Broom handles can be anything from driftwood to oak sticks used to dry tobacco leaves in Kentucky barns that can be more than 100 years old. No two Wicked Brooms are alike. Bentley showed us an unusual handle with spiky black burn marks embossed on the wood.
"I have a friend that does this type of art, she electrocutes the wood,” Bentley said. "I call it a lightning broom. Because it looks like lightning to me, like lightning struck the wood."
Bentley does custom work too, making quidditch brooms for Harry Potter fans, and transforming hiking sticks into housekeeping tools. When we were there a customer picked up her walking stick from Alaska adventures that now had colorful broom bristles attached to the end of it thanks to Bentley.
Bentley also shares broom lore: "If you sweep around your husband, he'll be eternally faithful."
"If you lay a broom across the floor it will indicate to your guests that it's time for them to go.”
"Putting a broom over your door is protection, so that's what this one is for,” she said, holding up a handmade broom that looked for all the world like something a witch would love.
She does make ceremony brooms for Wiccans - and often gets asked if she's a witch. Her standard reply?
"I say aren't we all?"
Watching a 'Wicked Broom' get made is spellbinding.
“I love doing it. I love making brooms,” said Bentley.
And using one? It's practical magic.
“I like I like the idea of taking something that is normal and making it something pretty.”
Wicked Brooms is located on Hwy 112 in Joyce Washington, (360) 808 1727 and they ship anywhere in the U.S.
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