WOVEMBER 2012 IS HERE!
WOVEMBER IS HERE, which means that our month-long celebration of WOOL is now fully under-way! We hope that you will enjoy the series of posts we have curated from your submissions, and from the glorious array of shepherds, shearers, spinners, weavers artists, knitters and makers that we are fortunate enough to know. There is literally a SHED-LOAD of WOOLLY GOODNESS lined up for these pages this WOVEMBER, and many wonderful people from the world of WOOL for you to meet and discover!
Firstly, you are warmly invited to download the WOVEMBER baa-tone for your mobile phone/smartphone from our SOUNDS OF WOOL page. This ensures an ongoing sonic reminder of WHAT WOOL IS and WHERE WOOL COMES FROM thoughout the month and for as long as you wish to have a baa-ing phone!
Secondly, although the blog-post competition launched here in October is now closed for submissions, we are reprising the idea of an open-submission PHOTO CONTEST to run throughout WOVEMBER. We realised that what you really loved last year was wearing WOOL, photographing WOOL and thinking about WOOL during WOVEMBER… and we didn’t want to deny you the fun of being able to assemble your WOOLLIEST outfits, creations and photographs throughout the month. Details of the prizes etc. can all be found on the competition page, and your photos will be displayed in the WOVEMBER 2012 gallery under our five “Closing the Gap” themes: “Growing Wool”, “Harvesting Wool”, “Processing Wool”, “Working with Wool” and “Wearing Wool”… here is some inspiration on the various themes!
Growing Wool – Sue Blacker’s Gotland and Bluefaced-Leicester rams eating out of their trough!
Harvesting Wool – shearing demonstrations at WOOLFEST
Processing Wool – washed Boreray fleece
Working with Wool – grafting two sets of live knit stitches together
Wearing Wool – wool skirt, Layter, wool hat, wool tights, sheepskin boots, wool vest and wool pullover in preparation for WOVEMBER 2012!
If you want to expand the contents of your WOOLLY wardrobe, a brand new crop of WOVEMBER BROOCHES is now available to buy from Felicity Ford’s Etsy store, with many brooches featuring WOOL from Laura’s Loom, of which we will hear more during WOVEMBER!
Do also keep your eyes peeled throughout WOVEMBER for WOVEMBER WORDS – the genius idea of new TEAM WOVEMBER MEMBER, Tom of Holland. We are also looking forward to seeing Tom’s WOOL trousers appearing later in the month! For those of you asking “Who is TOM?” please be referred to this lovely introduction.
Young Tom with goatbuddy.
What are your WOVEMBER plans? Let us know in the comments, we really want to find out how you intend to spend WOVEMBER!
Lastly, as a really special treat to celebrate the launch of WOVEMBER 2012, we have a lovely contribution from Susan Crawford, who you may remember from last year’s WOVEMBER post about Excelana? Here is Susan wearing the Princess Twinset from Coronation Knits, in 100% WOOL Excelana yarn.
Lucky for WOVEMBER readers, Susan has exclusively recorded a bedtime knitting pattern for any knitters who want a WOOLLY BEDTIME CHALLENGE! Entitled “Patterns at Bedtime”, this audio content is a reading by Susan Crawford from “The Lady’s Knitting Book”. If you want to have a go at knitting from the recording, we will feature a photo of your FOs here during WOVEMBER! Just listen to the audio, see what you end up knitting from the instructions, and send us a picture of it. Any such photos will automatically be entered into the WOVEMBER PHOTO CONTEST.
Here’s to a WARM & WOOLLY WOVEMBER!
Wovember 
I’m going to use Wovember to get back my knitting and spinning mojo. And also to get my butt in to gear and get my longest thread entries sent off to the Bothwell Spin-in.
Love! Great job!!!
I am going to use Wovember to finish up deadline knitting and then enjoy knitting my Larch cardigan and the Sheep Heid/BMC patterns. I have all the yarn, just need to knit it up!
This Wovember I’m going to a) try to wear as much real wool, preferably British, as possible b) spin up grey Wensleydale fibre I bought from the Woolcraft with Wensleydale farm, and small amounts of Welsh Badger-Faced, Soay and Hebridean fibre bought from The Woolclip c) Test knit a hooded cardigan pattern using Brigantia Luxury Aran.
Thanks for sharing the Baatone! I’ve downloaded it to my mobile and will use it as my morning wake up call! Not sure what my husband will think of that…
I love the baatone! 🙂 Ages ago my husband selected what he thought was a baaing ringtone, only to be disappointed when the phone rang with the old tone. It was months later when we discovered it was actually a sound people hear when they call the phone! I asked him to put your baatone on and later he came in and told me to ring the number. It made me laugh to have one flock of sheep baaing in my ear and another set baaing in his hand 😀
As for Wovember, I wear pure wool on my feet every day as my slippers are ones I felted myself last year. I want to make some felted boots with sturdier soles to wear outside, Wovember would be a good month to try the project, but I am also committed to Nano (write 50,000 words of a novel in a month…) Still, I mustn’t totally neglect my crocheting while I write, so maybe I should use some of that bumper bag of wash filz it wool I got on sale (less than a pound a ball! I bought all the stock they had left!)
Love the promotion of all things woolly. I am a hand spinner and weaver working with Welsh wool. I can’t say enough about this fabulous fibre, most under valued in the British Isles, which produces some of the best wool around. Wool is cool. Thank you. Helen ( nellie and eve) p.s. great ring tone!
Great blog post! Thank you for sharing.