Put the Copper K Fiber Festival on Your To-Do List This July 17-18!

Mark your calendars for the fifth annual Copper K Fiber Festival Saturday, July 17 (9AM-5PM) and Sunday, July 18 (9AM-3PM).

Event creator Kami Noyes of Ranching Fiber Traditions invites everyone to attend this event, where Fiber Arts are Getting Back to Their Roots! The event is free of charge; workshops, however, are not free and must be registered for ahead of time.

A total of ten workshops, ranging in price from $60 to $130 for 3+ hours of learning are being offered at the Fiber Festival. Learn everything from how to spin, how to dye, what Indigo is, how to nailbind, and more. Registration is open at http://www.copperkfiberfestival.com.workshops.

With over thirty vendors, the Fiber Festival offers not only learning experiences but a variety of homegrown gifts as well.

“It’s a great place to do your Christmas shopping and support homegrown businesses,” Noyes said.

Noyes, who grew up lambing in the Copper K Barn, always knew she wanted to hold a festival there someday, especially after she took up the hobby of spinning wool fibers from her sheep cuttings. Five years ago, after her sister Lacee Kountz restored the barn, that dream became reality. The event brings in hundreds of attendees each year from all over the country.

“I think a lot of people don’t even know what “fiber arts” in this case means,” Noyes said. “We aren’t talking about what you eat for breakfast.”

Fiber arts is a style of fine art which uses textiles such as fabric, yarn, and natural and synthetic fibers. It focuses on the materials and on the manual labor involved as part of its significance. Most fiber art works are works of art that communicate some sort of message, emotion, or meaning, and go beyond just the literal meaning of the materials. Traditionally fiber is taken from plants or animals, for example, cotton from cotton seed pods, linen from flax stems, wool from sheep hair, or silk from the spun cocoons of silkworms.

Mark your calendars! Next week’s Ledger will feature the vendors involved, as well as more info on workshops!