Copper K Fiber Festival This Weekend

Looking for a new hobby? Want to make your own Christmas presents this year? The Copper K Fiber Festival is the place to learn, and they have a great selection of workshops to choose from. A destination fiber festival, taking place in the remote countryside, the Copper K Fiber Fest is taking fiber arts back to its roots with this amazing weekend in the country.

The Fiber Festival will be held at the Copper K Barn outside of Whitehall July 15-16; the event is free to attend, but workshops carry a registration fee and must be signed up for ahead of time.

The Copper K Fiber Festival was started in 2017 by Kami Noyes. It all started when her sister Lacee Kountz took on a huge project of remodeling a family-owned barn into an event venue. The barn was used as a lambing barn when Kami was young. So, what better place to host a Fiber Festival than an old lambing barn remodeled into an event venue? The barn is located 8 miles south of Whitehall Montana.

The festival is a fun-filled fiber weekend in the countryside, that includes vendors, workshops, demonstrations, and more. It has become known across the United States as a destination fiber festival.

Many of the workshops are sold out, however, the following are still available to register for at http://www.copperkfiberfestival.com.

SATURDAY, JULY 15:

• Round Reed Basket Weaving with Michelle Andrus, 9 AM - 4 PM. Round Reed Basket Workshop is an introduction to weaving a simple basket. In the class, you will learn basic basket construction and weave your very own basket. The class will have hands-on instruction, live demonstrations, and tips for successful basket weaving. No prior basket-weaving knowledge is needed, just the desire to weave a basket.

• Beginning Punch Needle with Una Walker, 8 AM - 12 PM. In this class, you will learn all the basics of Punch Needle Rug Hooking while completing two small projects.

• Needle Felting Barn Owl with LaVonne Stucky, 1 PM - 4 PM. In this class, we will create a needle-felted barn owl for you to take home. You will also have plenty of wool to take home and play more. I know there are bats in the Copper K barn, but these sweet owls are much cuter and rare in Montana.

• Grand and Glorious Gradients with Peggy Doney, 9 AM - 4 PM. We've all drooled over gradient yarns and items made from their gorgeous colors. Learn a method for doing two-color dye gradients to create your own drool-worthy colorways. You will leave with 36 sample swatches, sample cards with recipes, notes, and a helpful spreadsheet.

SUNDAY, JULY 16:

• Wagon Wheel Rug with LaVonne Stucky, 8 AM - 12 PM. In this class, we will be creating a wagon wheel rug. Instead of using a wagon wheel, however, we will use a hula hoop, which becomes the loom. This is very basic weaving that includes tips and tricks on warping the hoop and binding off.

• Putting it Together - Plying a Perfectly Balanced Yarn with Tammy Jordan, 8 AM - 11 AM. Have you ever wanted to ply the perfect yarn? Is your plying coming out underpinned or over-energized? Then this class is perfect for you! In this three-hour interactive class, we'll talk about different types of plying and what methods are best for various applications. Then we'll spin and learn how to ply a perfectly balanced yarn using some handy tips and tricks along the way!

• Woolen Watercolors - Painting with Wool with Tammy Jordan, 12 PM - 3 PM. Come create your very own masterpiece while learning to paint with wool. We'll start with needle-felting your design, building color, and textures, and then we'll finish it off with a steam wet-felt before matting and framing your work.

• Surface Design in Wet Felting with Maria Cates, 8 AM - 11 AM. This workshop is for people interested in learning more about fibers, using embellishment techniques, or just wanting to have some fun. We will make a 6 x 6-inch sample for each new technique. We will make a sampler book for you to take home.

• Natural Dyeing Cloth - Billy Maxwell, 12 PM - 3 PM. Billy Maxwell, the dyer, and designer of the Montana Point Blanket. Expose yourself to the "devil's dye," natural indigo. A sin so deep that in 1609 France decreed that anyone using the dye would be executed. This evil will be committed in a vat of rotten urine (there will be non-urine vats for the weak), and the blue powders are imported from exotic Southeast Asia. A vile green liquid will be made in a cauldron where the living breath is choked out (anaerobic). Your victim of the vat will be English plain woven 100% wool flannel. Indigo is one of the greatest dye bounds ever and is usually removed with the violence of stones.

• Beginning Spindle Spinning with Sylvia Smith, 1 PM - 3 PM. Spinners have produced beautiful yarns on suspended spindles for centuries, and this type of spinning has been done a lot longer than spinning wheel spinning. Reconnect with your ancestral heritage by learning to spin on a drop spindle. During this class, Sylvia will teach you how to spin different types of wool on a drop spindle as you learn the basics of fiber drafting.

Learn more about these amazing workshop opportunities at http://www.copperkfiberfestival.com/workshopregistration.

Vendors attending the Copper K Fiber Fest include Ranching Tradition Fiber, Red Apron Catering, Notiwonk Springs, Stone Cottage Pottery & Farm, The Wool Mill & Serenity Sheep Farm Stay, The 100th Sheep, Feathergrass Fiber, Spanish Peaks Alpacas, Goldieknots Montana, Wandering Pines Ranch, Esther Purl Fibers, Dresow Family Farm, Fair Windsical Fiber Creations, Lone Pine Wool Emporium, Blue Savannah, Knaturl Knitwear, Desert Panda Fiber Arts, Pinnacle Creations, Wooly Walkers, McComas Handweaving, Athena Spinning, Wooly Witch of the West, Slate Falls Press, Raen Works, Flying Wheel Woolery, Botany of Being, Tilden Shop, Back Corner Farm, The Montana Wool Barn, Ness Boutique, Andrus Farms, Willow Creek Alpaca Studio, 406 Fiber, Ruby Mountain Massage, Prairie Cottage, and more!

Don't miss out on this annual festival of fibers at the Copper K Barn, Saturday, July 15, 9 AM - 5 PM, and Sunday, July 16, 9 AM - 4 PM.