Midtown’s Mash Handmade is easy to find, hard to stop visiting

I need to buy someone a monster. My first stop, obviously, is Mash Handmade.

On a recent winter afternoon, the first thing to catch my eye in the midtown shop is a shelf by the register. Sitting on it are colorful creatures made by KC Monstrosity, whose battery of plush, oversized eyes are begging for love like so many puppies in a pet store. Right away, I’m drawn to a yellow felt octopus wearing a curly, brown hipster mustache. I pick it up and hug it, my fingers folded between its tentacles.

“I’m going to buy this for my godson,” I tell Amanda Tholen Long, the store’s friendly co-owner. “He’s 4, so that seems about right, doesn’t it?” She signals her approval, and our conversation begins.

In 2009, Long and her mother, Karen Tholen, opened their shop among edge-of-Westport mainstays such as Boomerang (a vintage must) and Chop Tops salon. Their tagline says the store specializes in goods “for your mansion, apartment, shack, and house,” and the merchandise makes good on that claim. Mash, with its easy parking and regularly rotating stock, has made this slice of a popular neighborhood an even more exciting place to browse.

Because many people make a day of dining and shopping in Westport, Long sees a lot of repeat customers. She says she sometimes bumps into regulars when she’s out, occasionally sitting down with them for coffee.

“Something about the neighborhood opens people up,” she says. “Everybody has a story there, and people aren’t shy. You start having a conversation, and you know about somebody’s life by the time they leave. I don’t know if that’s the same everywhere. I always feel like I have a friend.”

Of course, customers who become friends come back that much more often. And they usually have something new to see. As I wander around the store, a variety of items call out to me: sculpted hanging planters, printed tea towels, vintage buttons, men’s wallets. Fellow browsers, a couple from the East Coast, tell me that they look forward to visiting every time they are in town. (The store sells products online, too.)

Mash Handmade achieves this broad appeal by offering  goods by artists and makers across the country, many of whom Long has met at craft fairs. Depending on the wares and the season, the vibe in the shop changes, but one benchmark holds true: These are items that Long and her mother would take home themselves.

“They’re things we would like to own ourselves or would feel really proud to pass on to someone else,” Long says. “We would be really happy to tell the story of where and how they were made.”

Those stories come out when I talk with Long, who’s an easy conversationalist. And even shy shoppers might be tempted to ask a question or two when they encounter, say, the Mistaken Lyric Coasters by MAKEatx in Austin, Texas. Featuring famously misheard song lyrics — think “There’s a bathroom on the right” or “Hit me with your pet shark” — they’re as close to a guaranteed icebreaker as a shopkeeper can keep on hand.

The local offerings are equally intriguing. Long’s favorites include the paint-by-number embroidery hoops and vintage toy photos of Doe-C-Doe. Long also loves the Foldedpigs dinnerware, an assortment of plates, bowls and mugs printed with anatomical images of skulls, spines and the human heart. (My favorite: the human brain, alongside the phrase “I love you more than zombies love brains.”) The Foldedpigs line has proved popular with collectors. Long says one of her repeat customers is a Johnson County woman who purchased the whole collection for her black-painted dining room.

Long is something of an artist herself. She and her husband, Brandon, have an 18-month-old son, so their own DIY projects have temporarily slowed. But Long still finds a way to make everyday items stand out.

“I’m constantly trying to make cool clothes for my kid,” she says. “Usually it’s changing out buttons or adding some stitching — things that I can do during a naptime. That’s how I live my life right now: naptime by naptime, when I’m not at the shop.”

Long didn’t necessarily predict this particular combination of family and career when she used to play the schoolyard game of marital prognostication that gives her store its name. (I played it, too, and became predictably upset whenever my fortune involved living in a shack with my least-favorite actor, Tom Cruise.)

“There are 30 years between me and my mom,” Long says. “We come from very different generations. But that game is something every generation has its own version of. The 60-year-old and the 30-year-old both know it. It’s strangely universal — and it always makes people smile.”

Another item with cross-generational appeal turns out to be the stuffed hipster octopus I’ve decided to buy. The moment I get him home, I realize that he’s staying with me. I still need a present for my godson. Guess I’m going back to Mash.

Mash Handmade, 10 a.m.–6 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 3900 Pennsylvania, mashhandmade.com