CNY Fiber Arts Festival returns with something for everyone
The CNY Fiber Arts Festival will return to Bouckville on June 9 and 10, 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. It is an amazing 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 very popular 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 dyeing, the ancient art that transforms fiber and yarn with plant, animal, or chemical dyes. Many of the 110 vendor booths will have demonstrations related to dyeing, and there are sure to be many free demonstrations of the other fiber arts, including weaving and spinning. 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, which take only an hour or two, leaving plenty of time for wandering and shopping. Special guest artists will present free talks each day as well. On Saturday, Susannah White from Carapace Farm Puppetry will share insights from her 40-plus years of experience with plant dyes in a talk called “Harvesting Color from Plants.”
Later on Saturday, Nancy Morey from Shadeyside Fibers will help attendees understand the evolution of the Rainbow Dyeing process and will talk about how to select the best dyes for fibers ranging from grease fiber to the most sumptuous silk top. On Sunday, Patti O’Brien Beaumont from Story Spun Yarns will round out the series with a talk called “Creative Solar Dyeing” – a way to get spectacular color and variation in your yarn or fiber without lots of special equipment or making a mess of your kitchen.
The lectures, children’s activities, and shearing demonstrations are all free with festival admission ($6 for adults, $10 for a weekend pass). Space in a workshop can be reserved at cnyfiberarts.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 will 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, just in case Central NY fails to provide perfect weather.
This will be the eighth 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. each day at Butternut Hill Campground, on Route 20 in Bouckville. For everyone’s safety, we have to ask that visitors leave their pets at home.