WOVEMBERWAL WINNERS!

Hello,

Hot on the heels of today’s earlier announcement, here are the winners of the different WOVEMBER WAL prizes! The ‘prizes’ are a selection of wool-covered brooches created by me to commemorate WOVEMBER, plus a sheepy card, and everlasting fortune and glory on this blog. The winners in the different categories are as follow.

DSC09957 (1024x943)_Wei Siew Leong

In the Golden Fleece category, we have Wei’s gorgeous version of Kate Davies’ “Shepherd Hoodie”. (Raveled here). Wei says:

It is knitted in pure New Zealand Corriedale wool yarn. The sheep are farmed by Anna Gratton, who also processes and spins the wool into yarn in her mill on her farm in Feilding. Incidentally, at least one of the shearers is also a woman!

I thought this project encapsulated the spirit of the hoodie very well in supporting a local shepherdess and wool producer. All my favourite projects are knitted in this yarn – it is very durable very, very, comfortable and cosy to wear.

Hurrah! Well done for bagging the Golden Fleece award, Wei!

In the Sheepy Rainbow category, we have Beate’s beautiful vest.

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What a beautiful process story, and such a lovely balance of a pop of heathery purple yarn against the natural sheepy shades. An innovative use of colour and fibre; definitely a celebration of the sheepy rainbow! Beate says:

It was quite an experience to work with such a variety of different wool types. I found that I had to avoid working edges with “Alpines Steinschaf” and “Waldschaf” which are the most primary breeds which I used because their wool is less elastic than all the others. All colours are natural 2ply yarns with the exception of one: the stripes in “heather” is a dyed 3ply yarn from my favourite sheep “Mia” which is a crossbred between Merino Landschaf and Bergschaf (Mountain Sheep).

I am happy that I managed to finish the vest in time though I am a bit sad that the project is over now. I took the idea for my vest from the book “The twisted sisters”.

Congratulations on winning the Sheepy Rainbow award for celebrating the colourful opportunities presented by the fleece of the sheep.

Finally, last but by no means least, we come to the Ewe-sain Bolt award in the WOVEMBER WAL, which is awarded to Cecilia Hewett for her lightning fast and super neat and tidy shiny darns in handspun. It seems Cecilia revived her entire sock drawer in the course of WOVEMBER and we love the new look that old socks have been given through this burst of darning activity.

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Cecilia says:

I seem to have darned holes in 13 pairs of socks. Roughly a hole a day, but sometimes 2 or 3. I used my own hand-spun yarn for all of the holes. Photo 1 is a picture of all the Wovember-mended socks I could find (I couldn’t find two pairs – I think they are on people!). Some of the darns were already there. There has been much darning on darning! Plus 2 pictures of a couple of my favourite mendings. Most of the mending is very visible because the darns make me happy! But I was quite pleased with my not-so-visible darning of some of the socks…

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…this photo above shows two darned heels in a pair of socks knitted in Noro yarn. A conventional woven darn on the left and a Swiss darn on the right. I liked the exercise of matching my handspun wool with the Noro colours…

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…this is my favourite darn. I love the little triangle!

Congratulations on your new/old socks, Cecilia and thanks to everyone who participated in the WAL. It was lovely to wool along with you; a big shout out to all in the WOVEMBER Ravelry group who have been making things with wool this month, and to all the folk sewing and weaving and mending and felting and knitting and crocheting and working with WOOL. PLUS a turbo big shout out to all the shepherds and shearers and spinners and scourers and winders and skeiners who give us this marvelous material to work with… there’s really nothing like WOOL: Let’s do this all again next year… who’s in?

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YOURS IN WOOL xF