Shopping in Augusta

Since 1987, Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors magazine has celebrated and explored the unique culture and active lifestyle of living on the Maine coast. Their team of Silver Editorial Excellence Award–winning writers, photographers, and illustrators showcases Maine’s unique ecology, cuisine, and art through tightly crafted prose and vivid images in each bi-monthly issue. Readers travel to popular and lesser-known cruising grounds, peek at the work of yacht designers and artisan boat builders, and step aboard vessels ranging from dinghies to yachts to doomed cardboard rafts. The magazine’s life-on-the-water coverage also extends to the architecture of homes and gardens lining the coast and relives the historic events that built the region’s rich cultural heritage.

Family patriarch Nordy Rockler opened the doors of his first store in 1954 to supply his fellow craftsmen with knowledge, friendly advice, and a large selection of tools for at-home woodworking projects. Now, the chain of retail outlets brims with more than 20,000 tools and specialized woodworking equipment. Next to a steely rainbow of hinges, casters, and screws, a supply of lumber and exotic hardwoods provides planks for building tree houses or just leaving around as a warning to uncooperative trees. The tenor buzz of power tools operated by newly knowledgeable guests drifts from educational sessions on operating equipment and woodworking.

The sparkle of vintage glass, the gleam of fire-polished spherules, and the bright colors of custom lucite beads, these are the tantalizing sights that meet the eye of a shopper walking into The Beadin' Path. To wander through the store’s wealth of beads is to wander through time itself. The collection is known for its vintage beads, and shoppers pass lucite spherules made between the ’60s and ’80s, raw metals saved from warehouses, and glass from West Germany nestled alongside fire-polished Czech beads. The wealth of textures and hues fuels creative minds, inspiring crafters to pick up vintage U.S.-made metal baubles and gemstones for nestling on cords, wiring into earrings, or stapling to the mailman’s lapel. In addition to enriching beaders’ stockpiles, The Beadin' Path also acquaints them with simple and advanced jewelry-making techniques during classes whose subjects range from wrapping leather to knotting pearls.