The CNY Fiber Arts Festival will return to Bouckville June 10 and 11, bringing activities for the whole family, a view into local agriculture, a little history, animals, music, food, and inspiration for artists and crafters. The festival celebrates fiber animals – sheep, goats, alpacas, llamas, and Angora rabbits – and the fiber arts: spinning, weaving, felting, dyeing, knitting, and crochet.
The children’s tent offers children (of all ages) the opportunity to try basic needle-felting, weaving, knitting, and other crafts, and to take their creations home. Young children can build an imaginary farm using our model barn, paint and color farm animals, decorate animal masks, play with baby goats and lambs, and use interactive exhibits to learn about exotic fiber and the process that transforms raw fiber into a finished garment.
Every year, the festival highlights one of the fiber arts. The focus of this year’s festival is on spinning, the ancient art of transforming raw fiber into yarn. Many of the 110 vendor booths will have demonstrations of different types of spinning, and one of the participating spinning guilds will watch over a Wheel Corral, where experienced spinners can try out different spinning wheels and visitors with no spinning experience at all can get a feel for the process. Even if the yarn turns out to be lumpy, it’s fun to try and not as mysterious as it seems!
Visitors who want to learn more about spinning or other arts can sign up for workshops or take one of the short courses that last only an hour, leaving plenty of time for wandering and shopping. Special guest artists will present talks each day as well. Garry Aney, Interpreter of Textiles at the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, will provide a historical timeline for hand spinning and talk about fiber preparation systems from a historical perspective. Barbara and Clint Fudge from Walking Wheel Farm will talk about spinning equipment through the years, and a well-known expert on flax, Pamella Wood, will show visitors how to prepare flax and go through all of the steps required to produce linen.
The lectures, children’s activities, shearing demonstrations, and sheepdog demonstrations are all free with festival admission ($6 for adults, $10 for a weekend pass). Space in a workshop can be reserved using information on the website, www.cnyfiber.org.
No summer festival would be complete without music and food, and the CNY Fiber Arts Festival offers a fine selection of both. Everett Farrell joins us to sing for visitors, and an assortment of food vendors will serve up both healthy and decadent meals to enjoy under the dining canopy. All of the vendor booths and demonstrations are under cover, except for the sheepdog demonstration, just in case Central New York fails to provide perfect weather.
This will be the seventh 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 unique 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 10:00 to 5:00 each day at Butternut Hill Campground, on Route 20 in Bouckville.