Happy Wovember! It’s been a while since my last blog post; when I haven’t been working over the summer I’ve been washing fleece ready to store over winter. Over the past few months I’ve finished some Tour de Fleece spins and have spent quite a lot of time making Christmas presents (which unfortunately I can’t show yet!). This has left me with quite a few WIP’s at various stages, which I thought I would share to start off Wovember, alongside some sneak peaks of the Christmas projects. As a bit of fun, I’m also doing this years Wovember daily word prompt challenge over on instagram.
Knitting
I’ve started two Romney knitting projects with the wool that I had spun. I started with a cabled cowl which is very nearly finished, but finding the right buttons proved difficult so it has been on hold over the summer. I have now decided to make my own, so hopefully this will be finished quite soon.
Whilst the cowl sat on the needles I decided to start knitting a pair of fingerless mittens from a book a friend kindly gifted me for Christmas. This is my first attempt at lace knitting and following a chart rather than written instructions, but the first mitten is coming along well, albeit it quite slowly.
Weaving
I have several weaving projects on the go, most of which are for presents so below are some very small sneak peaks of those!
I’ve been pondering the Ryeland weave conundrum for a while. My intention was to turn the woven cloth into some kind of jumper, but it is quite springy so I haven’t yet found a shape that it holds well without looking to bulky or cutting the fabric (the weave is too open for that). It’s been sitting folded on a chair for a time and the more I look at it, the more I think it would make an amazing blanket instead.
Washing Fleece
The suint bath has been in full flow over the summer months, I’ve washed a BFL, Hampshire Down, a sample of Shetland fleece and a large Clun Forest fleece (I was a bit overenthusiastic in washing this one and didn’t split it in half before washing it – it was a struggle to lift it out of the tub even with two people!). I’ve been optimising my suint method over the past year and I will do an updated post with all my modifications shortly.
Spinning
I have finished some of my tour de fleece spins (I will be doing a write up of my linen yarn after Wovember) and I’ve been continuing to spin Clun Forest – it’s a long process as there’s a lot of fleece and it’s being spun thinly. I have also been customising some yarn for a present knitting project.
That’s about all of my current WIP’s, many of them are quick finishes, so once I’ve finished making Christmas presents I will hopefully be doing full posts for them soon. I’ve linked more information about Wovember and my Wovember posts from last year below.
Happy Crafting!
Wovember was an annual blog campaign running from 2011-2017 centred on celebrating natural wool throughout the month of November. It was started to raise awareness of the importance of labelling commercial fabrics correctly (i.e. not using the term ‘made with wool’ for something made from a fluffy synthetic fibre). You can read more about Wovember and lots of other woolly information on the website.
Wovember Blog Posts from 2020:
Loose Ends 