Athlone to host wool and fibre festival
Small businesses selling wool, woollen products, felt, natural dyed yarns and fabric, from across Ireland will assemble at the Radisson Blu Hotel on Sunday, October 11, to take part in the inaugural Midlands Fibre Festival. More than 80-years after Athlone's iconic woollen mill was destroyed in a fire, the town is set to gain fame for skeins and hanks of yarn once again.
Conceived and organised by natural dyer and indie wool artist Mary Rambaran-Olm and Chad Olm, the festival will see the presence of 38 vendors from all over Ireland. Apart from trade stalls, the day-long event will also feature four workshops and a documentary film screening.
Chad is a Canadian photographer and photojournalist living in Co Leitrim Ireland with wife Mary, who is a literary historian specialising in Medieval England. For the scholar, knitting and crochet turned out to be interest, therapy and self-care all spun together. This laid the foundation for her independent yarn-dyeing venture, Republic of Yarnia, which sells natural-dyed yarns in pure and blended fibres ethically sourced from Peru.
The couple brought their individual skills together -- Chad with his organisational prowess, Mary with her discernment and understanding of crafts and cultures -- to make the event a success and also an annual fixture.
"There's a very strong fibre community in Ireland, but there are not large scale events where the community can come together. Midlands Fibre Festival is our way of providing opportunities to small scale businesses and artists. The festival supports rural communities, encourages sustainable enterprise, values Irish-made products, and preserve cultural traditions while allowing them to evolve for a new generation," Chad shared.
For a country that is synonymous with sheep meadows, and boasts of more than five million sheep, it is ironical that Ireland's clothing market is full of polyester and acrylic garments.
The indigenous wool varieties are few and far between. Chad explains that the gap is not in wool production, but processing. "Ireland has so much wool, but much of it goes to waste because there are not enough processing facilities. You cannot use the sheared wool straight away, there are many steps of processing involved, which include sorting, cleaning, carding, combing, spinning and more. The dearth of processing facilities drives the cost of refining wool up, which deters a sheep farmer from utilising the wool," he elucidates.
The festival is lending a helping hand to Woolstore, a wool-processing company based in Galway, which is crowdsourcing to set up a wool mill in Ireland. Part of the ticket sales will go towards Woolstrore's fundraiser. Wool and woollen products have been intertwined with the Irish culture, in fact in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, each county had its own local woollen mill.
Athlone too featured a famed mill, which stood exactly where the venue of the festival, the Radisson Blu Hotel stands today. The full-circle moment feels like providence, but Chad reveals that Athlone was chosen to host the event for its central location. "The vendors participating are from all over Ireland, Northern Ireland included. Geographically, Athlone is a good central to everybody. We hope to create an annual celebration that contributes to the local economy while showcasing the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit that exists throughout rural Ireland," said Chad, who aspires to make the festival stand in the same league as Barcelona Knits and the Swiss Yarn Festival.