Over the weekend, all things soft, dyed and sewn could be found in part of western Massachusetts as the annual “Fiber Festival of New England” returned to West Springfield. As WAMC reports, the event wove together lovers of fabrics, wool and all that’s fibrous and fit for crocheting.
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If you own a pair of sewing needles, shear sheep or just like to amass fabrics you’ll never use – there was a place for you in West Side this past weekend.
The product of the Eastern States Exposition partnering with the New England Sheep and Wool Growers Association, the Fiber Festival of New England filled the Mallary Complex at the ESE fairgrounds – complete with over a hundred vendors, a couple thousand attendees and a few alpacas.
There were sheep, too, including a pair that came with Kate Pelkey of Otter Lake Farm and Fiber – all the way from Cato, New York.
Standing beside her yarn wares and flock of two sheep, the shepherdess and fiber artist said it was her first festival and a trek worth making, especially since customers had special wool for her – unusable fibers destined for actual greener pastures.
“When we shear our sheep, there's parts of it that are great for the textiles - for your yarn and roving and what have you. But there are pieces - like the belly wool, the britchy wool, the wool around the head - that gets really contaminated with vegetable matter,” she explained. “Most of the time, we've thrown that away. Well, historically, for centuries, people used to bury it… what we've done is we've created a wool fertilizer pellet – [making] it more available to the average home gardener as well as organic farms that are utilizing it - so we are not wasting any component of this sheep wool.”
That was the spirit throughout the festival – celebrations and applications of all that is wooly and sewn. It included a small ocean of multi-colored yarn skeins, hanks and balls, provided by vendors from across New England and the greater Northeast, including New York and Pennsylvania.
Vicky Collingwood was one of them, venturing in from Peru, Vermont with her husband Brian to run the Wooly Caterpillar and Fox and Owl Dye Lab stall.
“So, I am a knitter - been a knitter for a long time - and we were going to festivals and whatnot and I was buying so much yarn, my husband said ‘You know, you have enough yarn… we could just start a yarn store,’” she said. “And I said ‘Well, yes… we could sell other people's things, but we could also just make our own’ and so, here we are. I am an emergency room nurse by trade, but needed something to relax me and take out the stress, so, I started knitting more and more and more, and then we got off into the dying world.”
One could say it’s a lively dying world. Merino sheep and Suri alpaca yarn blended with recycled nylon and silk combined to form a rainbow of sorts. Collingwood considers the coral and dusty purple offerings among her favorites.
It’s rewarding work, she says, and after a year of dying yarn, one of the biggest rewards has been the fiber community itself.
“This community is amazing - I have been saying all day that we have found our people, and it is so amazing - to find your home and your community and the people who you know share your same values, same thoughts and are into the same crafts that you are,” she added.
Echoing that was Wilbur VanSant, clad in a felt mushroom cap beret and standing beside a massive “wool sculpture” dragon that was roughly half his size.
Based out of Great Barrington, Mass., VanSant was overseeing his family’s “Going Gnome” stall, featuring a felt menagerie of small gnomes, dragons and pieces of “whimsy,” as VanSant described – many of which were sold in kits for anyone looking to get into the practice of catching the right fibers and layering them into something special.
“It's very easy to start,” he said of needle felting. “It's hard to master - it's one of those situations, but I also think that it is such a calming experience. I think it's a really grounding thing for people to do and you can really make anything out of wool - you can needle felt anything and that's the beauty of it - it's that creativity, that whimsy and, again, that's what we're trying to capture here - these mushroom berets these little mushroom ‘caps.’”
Sculpting, sewing or stitching – for many, fibers offer more ways than one to express one’s self. It’s a craft and trade passed down generation after generation. So steeped in history, in fact, that some take to re-enacting age-old traditions.
Members of the Society for Creative Anachronism did just that, complete with replica garb and looms that date to the 17th century -- or earlier. Many offered history lessons as well as tutorials. Kris Schlain – aka Eloise of Coulter – was happy to walk one festivalgoer through the art of the Oslo stitch.
“As you see… you can do it with a hank of yarn and one of those tapestry needles,” she said after bagging the work-in-progress yarn bracelet for the visitor.
“I was about to say [needles] from JoAnn’s, but JoAnn’s is no longer with us… a moment of silence,” the SCA member since 1987 joked.
Among their ranks was Anne Akin, who had been involved in the group for some 40 years after first encountering the SCA in college.
Armed with a box loom and dressed as her 12th century Scottish character, Ciara, she says whether it’s the Hartford, Conn., area SCA group (the “Barony Beyond the Mountain”) or sewing itself – the creative, community spirit is real and a special one.
“… I love making things. I love learning how to make things. I love all of the hands-on activities - and this group has it all,” Akin said. “And the people are as geeked out about these things as I am - they're my people.”
