The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Festival celebrates fiber animals
The CNY Fiber Arts Festival will return to Bouckville on June 8and 9, bringing activities for the whole family, a view into agriculture, animals, music, food, and inspiration for artists and crafters.
BOUCKVILLE, N.Y. >> The CNY Fiber Arts Festival will return to Bouckville on June 8 and 9, bringing activities for the whole family, a view into local agriculture, 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 a shopping opportunity for knitting, weaving, or any artistic endeavor that calls for natural fiber or yarn.
New this year is a weaving competition in honor of Viv Fulton, one of the founding members of the festival committee. The competition is open to all, and weavers can find the entry rules on the website, www.cnyfiberarts.org.
The popular Children’s Tent offers children of all ages the opportunity to try needle-felting, weaving, and other crafts, and to take their creations home. Young children can build an imaginary farm using a model barn, paint and color farm animals, 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.
Older children can needle-felt a scene, weave a pot holder, experiment with finger-knitting, and admire the new gallery of art on agThe CNY Fiber Arts Festival will return to Bouckville on June 8and 9, 2019, from 10 a.m. to 4p.m. ricultural themes created by local children and teenagers.
Back by popular demand, demonstrations of sheepdog herding will take place twice each day (weather permitting), as will demonstrations of sheep shearing. Many of the 110 vendor booths will offer informal demonstrations of spinning and weaving, and one of the participating spinning guilds will watch over aWheel 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.
Visitors who want to learn more about spinning or felting 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. This year, the lectures will focus on aspects of knitting: Knitting 101, Fair
Isle Knitting, and Perspectives of a Yarn shop owner.
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 using information on the website, www.cnyfiberarts.org.
CNY Fiber Arts Festival will feature a live DJ and an assortment of food vendors. All of the vendor booths and demonstrations – except for the herding dogs - are under cover, just in case Central New York fails to provide perfect weather.
This will be the ninth 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. The festival runs from10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day at Butternut Hill Campground, on Route 20 in Bouckville.
For everyone’s safety, visitors must leave their pets at home.