The CNY Fiber Arts Festival will return to Bouckville June 12 and 13, 2021, to celebrate local agriculture and artistry. The festival features fiber animals – sheep, goats, alpacas, llamas, and Angora rabbits – and the fiber arts: spinning, weaving, felting, dyeing, knitting and crochet. It is an invaluable shopping opportunity for anyone who treasures unique handcrafted works and anyone who enjoys knitting, weaving or any artistic endeavor that calls for natural fiber or yarn. Anyone who has not yet tried working in the fiber arts would also find tools and lots of free expertise and encouragement along with the raw materials for a new adventure.
The festival, like so many events, had to be canceled in 2020, but is back in a form carefully tailored to ensure everyone’s safety. Vendors will be spaced out and tents opened up to provide a true outdoor experience, with COVID protocols observed. Masks will be worn to protect unvaccinated friends. There will be a fleece sale and shearing demonstrations, but the popular Children’s Tent, workshops, and lectures had to be put on hold until next year to meet state requirements. They will be back in 2022.
Many of the 90 vendor booths will offer informal demonstrations of spinning, needle-felting, and weaving, and all of the vendors are happy to talk about how their products are created. The vendor booths and demonstrations are under cover, just in case Central NY fails to provide perfect weather.
No festival would be complete without music and food, and the fiber arts festival has a good selection of both.
This will be the tenth fiber arts festival held at Butternut Hill Campground in Bouckville, although the organization behind it, CNY Fiber Artists and Producers, came into being through a similar showcase within the Madison County Fair two years earlier. As a homegrown venue for the exhibition of fiber products and finished goods made from natural fibers, the festival is a great place to see and purchase one-of-a-kind handmade articles as well as raw materials for your very own fiber-based creation. You can even “start from scratch” by buying one of the many raw fleeces at the festival’s Fleece Sale tent.
The festival runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily at Butternut Hill Campground, on Route 20 in Bouckville.
For everyone’s safety, we have to ask that visitors leave their pets at home. Details on the event can be found at cnyfiberarts.org.
CNY Fiber Artists and Producers, Inc. gratefully acknowledges the support of the Farm Credit Northeast AgEnhancement program, which supports programs, projects, and events that are intended to strengthen agriculture, commercial fishing, and the forest products sector in the Northeast. This program is a combined effort of Farm Credit East, Yankee Farm Credit, and CoBank.
The festival is also made possible with funds from the Decentralization Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the state Legislature and administered by CNY Arts.