"I don't care if they buy or don't buy. I just visit people," she said.

While it takes Fisher, 78, longer to sew mukluks than it used to, the extra time doesn't deter her from continuing to make the fur boots, she said. "You have to do something when you get old."

Fisher's grandmother taught her how to sew when her mother passed away, she said. At the time, she was very young and left with the responsibility of raising her brother and four other sisters as well as helping her father.

The money Fisher makes from selling her knit hats and mukluks supplements her income as a cook at Alaska Regional Hospital in Anchorage.

She shares some of the money with her sisters, two of which still live in Fisher's village of Shishmaref on an island just north of the Bering Strait. "I don't use all my money because they need it," she said.

Annie Blue of Togiak, in Southwest Alaska, uses the money she makes each year at the Native Arts Fair to buy groceries, translated her daughter, Nellie Thomas. At 88 years old, Blue still makes a fur hood in less than three days.

For the first time since Thomas can remember, her mother doesn't plan to sell her fur hoods at next year's AFN Convention in Fairbanks. The cost and distance of traveling to the Interior city would be too much, Thomas said.

Next year's location, however, will be more convenient for Nancy Butler, who learned how to sew while living in her Interior village of Huslia before moving to Fairbanks.

Butler began selling beaded leather hairclips among other beaded accessories at the Native Arts Fair 15 years ago because she was unemployed, she said. Today, she sells her work throughout the year to gift shops and at several arts and crafts fairs in Anchorage and Fairbanks.

"I kind of perfected my design, so I stick with what sells," Butler said.

Most years, John and Arlene Waghiyi buy crafts from other people living on St. Lawrence Island to sell at the AFN Convention.

"We're representing people from our island because they can't come here and we've here," Arlene said.

Arlene and her husband also make traditional Eskimo drums to sell in addition to the ivory carvings and jewelry from their island, just 40 miles from Siberia in the Bering Sea. While their business, St. Lawrence Island Drumbeats, does not have a Web site yet, John said he does sell the crafts using e-mail.

Tlingit artist Jan See has resisted learning how to market his silver jewelry online, he said. See prefers selling his work at Native Arts Fair, Fur Rendezvous and several gift shops in Anchorage, where he has lived for the past 30 years.

In additional to teaching night classes to adults at the Alaska Native Heritage Center, See also teaches jewelry design and carving classes at the center to students after school.

"I think it is important that all the cultures in Alaska teach the younger generation," he said. "Out of all the students I teach, one or two will pick it up later in life."

Like many of See's fellow artists at the Native Art Fair, he plans to continue with his craft as long as he can.