on I hope you won’t mind a personal post here from me, Felicity, one of the members of TEAM WOVEMBER! I wanted to explain a little bit why I chose “Closing the Gap” as the theme for this year’s month-long celebration of WOOL and why there will be a SONIK dimension to this years’ WOVEMBER festivities.… Continue Reading Why “Closing the Gap”? and why SONIK WOVEMBER?
on To people who follow Felicity Ford’s blog, it will come as no surprise that this year’s “Closing the Gap” theme for Wovember will feature a SONIK dimension! To introduce this SONIK element, we shall commence with a fun sheep sound factoid! Did you know that the sounds of sheep being herded are some of the… Continue Reading Announcing SONIK WOVEMBER
on Judging the Wovember competition photographs has taken a short while because in deciding which photos should win, several factors emerged. We realised that because WOVEMBER is essentially a campaign site, the winning entries should somehow make WOOL accessible and exciting for new audiences; to speak somehow of the virtues of WOOL in a way which… Continue Reading Sheep photos in Wovember
on Did you know that in 1678 an act was passed in the British Parliament decreeing that the dead must only be buried in WOOL and not in any other sort of textile? A guide to Justices of the Peace on how to enforce the “Burial in Woollens Act,” dated 1710. It seems that the act… Continue Reading Sinister Saturday WOOL fact
on One of the themes running through these WOVEMBER posts concerns how the word ‘WOOL’ conjures certain imaginative associations. Our imaginative associations are gold dust to advertisers and brand experts, and Kate has written about – amongst other things – the specific lure of the word ‘wool’ and its evocation of ‘cosiness’ when it is addressed… Continue Reading A smuggling story featuring sacks, cloves and fells.
on This evening’s sheep-related tale comes from Richard Martin at Filkin’s Mill in the Cotswolds. According to Alan Butler*, “the name Cotswold is a combination of ‘Cot’ from the cots or enclosures where the sheep were kept, and ‘wolds’, which is a descriptive word for open, hilly ground.” In Filkin’s Mill, Richard has collected a vast… Continue Reading The Sheep Yoke
on From your wonderful comments on the Wovember petition it is obvious that incorrect and confusing descriptions of textiles are abundant. But how has the confusion surrounding the word “WOOL” arisen? Throughout the month we will explore that question in different ways. This evening we shall hear from Ethel Mairet’s wonderful book published in 1939 and… Continue Reading On ‘Artificial Wool’
on Throughout Wovember we shall be sharing blog posts here which gave us extra insight into the history, culture and production of WOOL when we read them. This post was written by Rachael Matthews in 2009, and all the photos were taken by her. It is re-published from the Prick Your Finger blog. We shall be… Continue Reading Walter’s Crook
on Did you know that LAMBS-WOOL is the name of a traditional English beverage? This tasty brew is made by mixing hot ale with sugar, spices and roasted apples – either whole crab-apples, or pulped cooking apples – and its woolly name derives from the ‘fleecy’ appearance of the apples floating on the surface of the… Continue Reading drinking lambs-wool