Day 1: American South – Online Fiber Festival

Welcome Video

Welcome to the May 2021 Online International Fiber Festival! Be sure to watch the morning video each day for an overview of the day’s activities, as well as to meet the vendors from each region and get a better look at their products!

Join the discussion in the Online International Fiber Festival group on Ravelry or Facebook. And be sure to follow the festival on Instagram.

Vendors from the American South

All of these vendors can be found in the marketplace. (Click the link then scroll down to the marketplace section!)

AT Haynes House Yarns is an indie yarn business with fun and family at heart. Every colorway and product has a story.

BiddyKnits specializes in sock weight Hand dyed Yarns, including sock sets that allow a contrasting color for heels and toes. Inspirations for their colorways come from foods, nature, and more!

KnitSwag was born from the desire to see technically accurate and beautiful knitted designs in an illustrated format. Find custom knitting swag, unlike anything you can find anywhere else!

Leatherwood Creek Farm raises heritage breed Tunis and Shetland sheep. Find yarn and roving from their flocks along with a variety of handmade items produced here on their farm including handwoven items, sheep photography and goat milk soap.

Louisiana Yarn Guys is a small-batch independent yarn dyer based in Shreveport, Louisiana. Their yarn is dyed to order as customers purchase it, which allows them to ensure that the entire order comes from the same dye lot.

The needleclicksEtc shop is full of whimsical, unique stitch markers, progress keepers, and note cards. Also find small batch hand dyed yarns, rovings, and occasionally some one-of-a-kind batts.

Recommended Classes

Choose one (or more!) of the following classes for your morning learning. You will need a subscription to Craftsy to take the classes. Please note: if you have a subscription, you do not need to purchase the class unless you want to. Simply click play on the video!

Boho Style: Embroidered Sweater with Annie Lupton

Freeform Crochet with Myra Wood

How to Crochet with Meredith Crawford Cowser

Next Steps in Socks with Lucy Neatby

My First Socks with Lucy Neatby

Explore the Region

Spend your afternoon on a virtual tour of today’s region.

Vendor Videos

Enjoy this farm tour of Leatherwood Creek Farm with Julie Refer! Along the way, we’ll learn about a heritage breed of sheep, the American Tunis.

Enjoy this video sent in by KnitSwag demonstrating the process of designing one of her gifts for knitters! Find her mugs and more in the Marketplace!

Duane and Joshua of the Louisiana Yarn Guys walk us through making a pot of chicken and sausage gumbo!

For an upgraded experience, subscribe to CuriosityStream! CuriosityStream is a streaming service like Netflix, but just for documentaries. Their videos are commercial free and available at a higher streaming quality than many of the options available through YouTube, and a portion of the cost of your membership will help defray the costs of running the festival. Once you have subscribed to CuriosityStream, click on the titles below to go directly to the recommended videos.

The Lightbulb Moment: Florida; How Real Estate Rogues Invented Florida as We Know It — A CuriosityStream exclusive documentary covering the history of Florida, focusing mainly on the modern development of the state.
King: A Filmed Record; Montgomery to Memphis — A collection of archival film of the life and speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from 1955 – 1968, walking us through many of the key moments of the Civil Rights Movement. Also includes out takes of speeches by other voices for and against the movement. There film is broken into two episodes, totaling 3 hours of footage. The first part begins with the Montgomery Bus Boycott and ends with the March on Washington. The second part begins with King’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and ends with his funeral procession.
History’s Greatest Homes: Monticello — A tour of the building and history of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, as well as the community that occupied it.
Fiddlin’ — This documentary takes us to the Old Fiddler’s Convention in Galax, Virginia. It is joyful, engaging, and positive in ways that social documentaries about this part of the country generally are not without shying away from some of the ongoing issues facing Appalachia. This would be a great documentary to watch with music-loving teens in your life!

The following videos are available for free on YouTube. Consider taking advantage of the free trial of a YouTube subscription, which will block the commercials YouTube usually adds to their videos. The trial lasts for one month and they will send you an email a week before you are charged, so be sure to cancel at the end of the festival or when you get the email, or stay subscribed if you find it worth your while.

Spend a year in the Great Smokey Mountain National Park, America’s most visited national park!

Hear about the history of the Blues, including the conditions that inspired the genre, from some of the biggest names still alive when it was filmed. A magnificent documentary. There is some non-family friendly language from time to time after the 1 hour mark.

Johnny Cash was a legend in the music industry. One of many musicians born in the South, his career shaped the work of many who came after him.

The Vanderbilt family built a massive, European-style estate house in Asheville, NC, called the Biltmore. This documentary compares the house to Downton Abbey, but you there is lots of good info about the house for those of you who maybe haven’t seen Downton, too! This version of the documentary has production notes and sounds at the beginning. Skip immediately to 1:30 to avoid it.

Mark Twain grew up in Missouri, but came to be known around the world for his writing and activism. Some of his writings were so controversial for his time that his family prevented them from being published after his death. Learn more about the man behind the stories!

Zora Neale Hurston is best known for her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. This African-American author and anthropologist made her mark on the Harlem Renaissance as well as the larger American canon, influencing the generations of authors who have come after her.

Evening Entertainment

Tonight’s entertainment is a collection of live performances from the New Orleans Jazz Festival, from 2013 – 2016. It’s something like 15 hours of music, but within the playlist there is something for everyone. Pick and choose the performances you want to enjoy, or watch a song from each performer!

We hope you enjoyed your day in the American South!
Join us tomorrow as we visit Atlantic Canada!