A selection of spinning wheels and a picker are offered for sale at the Prairie City Fiber Fest. (Justin Davis/Blue Mountain Eagle)

PRAIRIE CITY — Spinning wheels, brightly colored fabrics and vendor booths scattered throughout Prairie City can mean only one thing — Prairie City Fiber Fest is back.

The annual tradition, now in its fifth year, was held Friday-Sunday, July 28-30. It drew 21 vendors along with attendees anxious to purchase handmade fabrics or participate in one of the workshops covering everything from spinning yarn to constructing works of pine needle art and punch needle techniques for beginners.

Vendors for Fiber Fest were set up either in the town’s teen center or community center if they elected to stay indoors. Others erected shade canopies and proceeded to showcase their wares at the city park.

Fiber Fest is the brainchild of Prairie City resident Ginger Shive, a spinner and weaver who had been to similar festivals in the Willamette Valley and wanted to bring the same fun experience to Eastern Oregon.

Shive used to have a major part in the planning and execution of the festival during its early years. This year she attended the event as merely another face in the crowd.

“This year, I’ve completely divorced my way into enjoying the Fiber Fest because everybody on the board has stuck with me,” she said.

Still, Shive is keenly aware of how the event has grown over the past five years.

“We’re starting to draw from all over,” she said about the cast of vendors and attendees hailing from as far away as the Arizona/Mexico border.

One of those vendors, Donalee Rodger, the co-owner of the Rodger Family Farm and Fiber Mill in Lebanon, was a new addition to the festival.

“This year just happened to be the time that we wanted to come on down and see what it’s about,” she said.

The Rodger family specializes in Shetland sheep as the source of the fiber they spin and sell. Rodger described the breed as “primitive,” having only been in the States since the 1980s.

The Rodger Family Farm and Fiber Mill uses a unique way to harvest their sheep wool, preferring to pull the wool from the sheep’s body like pulling hair off a shedding dog. Sheep shears are not necessary.

“It takes about an hour and a half,” she said.

Rodger also said her family’s Lebanon-based fiber mill is the only one in the state that is currently open and taking in customers.

Dianne Wright of Wandering Pines Ranch in Weiser, Idaho, has been coming to the Prairie City Fiber Fest since its first year. She said vendor numbers were lower than usual this year, but the quality of their wares was not.

“They’re all really good vendors. The ones that I’ve talked to and seen at shows — there are really good vendors that we’ve got here. Fine products available,” she said.

Wandering Pines Ranch supplies everything from the ground up, according to Wright.

“If they want to spin it or felt it, if they want to just knit it, we have yarn. If they don’t want to do any of that and they just want a finished hat, we have that as well,” she said.

Prairie City Fiber Fest Board of Directors President Trish Lindaman said she hopes that the board has established a tradition in the yearly festival but there is still work to do.

“It gets better every year. I think what we really want is more people to come to the event,” she said.

Lindaman said shoppers are crucial for the vendors, who spend time and money making the trip to Prairie City.

“The vendors are here because they want to sell stuff, so you need some traffic,” she said.

Along with attracting more shoppers to Fiber Fest, Lindaman said another major goal is to top 30 vendors for the event. Last year’s festival fell just shy of that at 28 vendors.

Another detail the Fiber Fest board has to work out is reserving the city park in Prairie City for another three years following next year’s event.

While all of these things are the concern of the board, for the vendors, Prairie City has left a lasting impression as a warm and welcoming community.

“The town — the first year I don’t think the town was real excited about us, but over the years they’ve become extremely welcoming and wonderful people,” Wright said.