Some months ago I offered my help to a friend who was considering organising a new fibre festival. I said that if she wanted help on the finance & planning then I'd be only too happy to help out. So she asked me about 6 weeks ago if I was still interested & of course I said 'Yes', anything to do with spinning & knitting & I'm in there. So the ideas began flying back & forth, lots of finding out possible venues, the cost of hiring marquees & portable loos, how much to charge traders, doing plans of floor space. But there was one problem, finding a venue. One of the other people interested, Emma had found a possible site in Surrey, but they wouldn't communicate with Jan, so that was no good. Then she went to an open day/craft day at a farm in Thurleigh, Bedfordshire & thought the farm would be an ideal place. She talked to them & they said they were up for it! We went to visit them & they showed us round the possible fields that we could use & we went away with a venue & lots of ideas buzzing in our heads.
Now we really had to find out very seriously about hiring stuff, and found a few local companies who look as though they will be OK. Jan's in the process of designing a website so that we can go live at the end of September, but she's already getting people wanting trading stalls & that's before we've done any real advertising. It has been circulated to the local Guild of Weavers, Spinners & Dyers, but only just gone out on the huge internet forum of Ravelry, so hopefully people will be starting to generate interest very soon.
Although it's only in the very early stages, we want to work really hard to have a festival here in the East/South/Midlands, so many hours of slog will have to go into getting it just right so that people can have an enjoyable weekend.
Did I tell you the date? It's 23rd & 24th July 2011. The venue will be Scald End Farm, Thurleigh, Bedfordshire.
I look forward to seeing you there.
this sounds great - will watch with interest - especially being a local (Herts) knit designer!
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