TRYON – Walk into the Tryon Coffeehouse Co-op, and volunteer and board member Chris Rough Baschon will ask you if she’s given you a bird yet to go with the coffee.

This question, according to Baschon, sometimes throws people off as it isn’t the kind of bird, which she said is the hand signal, most are accustomed to. These are paper birds Baschon weaves in her spare time with tags attached to them by fish line that have “peace” on them.

Baschon is also a local artist when she isn’t at the coffeehouse, and said she’s given away most of 3,000 birds since she began making them. Baschon said she also taught middle school art in Greenwood, S.C. for 13 years.

“I’ve always been interested in this kind of thing and, you know, Sept. 21 is the International Day of Peace, and I used to do that in my classroom,” Baschon said. “We made a big puppet out of bed sheets and pinwheels for the day. I used to teach a little boy who now is at the Joy Wok and he loved origami, which I don’t because it’s too tedious, and so we found these instructions on YouTube and we did them in colored paper. Someone told me if we do them in white, they would look like peace doves.”

The birds are free, though Baschon did say some have given her money for them, and some have refused to receive one altogether.

“I feel as if they think I’m going to start preaching to them or I’m going to ask for money, and I’ve had people say, ‘there will never be peace on earth,’” Baschon said. “I tell them that for a nanosecond there is. I have read, years ago when I was doing this in my classroom, that I think it was Palestinian women and Israeli women, there were a couple of groups, they knew that if peace was going to happen, it was going to have to come from the ground level up.”

Mandalas are also a part of Baschon’s repertoire and she hosts “Mandala Monday” sessions at the coffeehouse on Monday nights. One of her mandalas has a bird in it, which Baschon said was unintentional, and she describes the inclusion of the bird in this piece as being “organic.”

“Me being here at the coffee shop gives me the opportunity to do a lot of things, and I love doing it for people who first come in,” Baschon said. “In fact, today (Tuesday), this couple came in from Kentucky and they were looking for breakfast at the Trade Street Bakery. I gave her a bird and she was just so pleased and she said her daughter is going to love this because she loves peace things, and I gave her another one for her daughter.

“I was behind the counter and she wanted to give me a hug, and she was walking with a cane and barely could walk, and I hugged her and it made me tear up. It’s not me, I’m just a vehicle and I feel that gets overused sometimes but it’s the truth, it’s just what I do.”

The tragedy in Charleston where nine members of the Emmanuel Baptist Church were gunned down last summer left Baschon “at a loss,” and she said she made peace birds for the victims and sent them with a friend to the Charleston church.

“That was really the beginning for me, and I sat at my house and just made birds,” Baschon said. “And then a friend of mine said she had to go down there and I said I would make nine of them and put the people’s names on the back. She went to the church service Joe Biden attended and gave them to what I guess was the deacon. He was so pleased and wanted to put them in the bible study classroom.”

When the shooting at the nightclub in Orlando occurred, leaving 49 dead and injuring 53 others, Baschon said the incident blew her away. Baschon made 49 white birds and 53 rainbow colored birds to be sent down to Florida.

“I put their names on the back of the birds, and as it turns out, a friend of a friend’s daughter knew two people who worked there, and they were on vacation the night it happened,” Baschon said. “I sent them to her, and she told me they think they are going to make a memorial out of it. The families wanted the birds, and I said let the families have them because I’ll just make more.”

Baschon has also sent birds off across the country to California and even to Coventry, England. She said she when she mails the birds she only has to pay for the shipping costs and the box they are delivered in. Each bird, according to Baschon, takes about 10 to 11 minutes to make. To see more of Baschon’s works online, visit thecirclewithin.com.

“This is just something that money cannot buy,” Baschon said. “And it’s not hard to be nice, to be kind. It’s just weaving, and someone told me I could do it blindfolded, but I cannot. I love doing it.”