on At WOVEMBER we love to hear exactly why people love to work with wool. Louise interviewed Linda Regel – owner of Made By Ewe – last year for KnitBritish: her knitting kits are illustrative of her love for British wool and here she explains her inspiration for her Knit Your Own Sheep kits. “It is absolutely essential to me that… Continue Reading Wovember Words: Wool from stuffing to stitches
on Team WOVEMBER’s Louise cannot resist a woolly song or poem. I was searching for a song for your Sunday listening pleasure and I found Click Go The Shears, an Australian folk song from the turn of the 19th Century. This is a totally new one on me, but may be familiar to some of you.… Continue Reading Wovember Words: Click go the shears
on I was thinking that in all this talk of wool, sheep, sheep products and those involved with those, that we are forgetting someone very important..the sheep dog! Time is short and I can’t obviously celebrate every breed, but after stumbling across this picture on the Internet Archive, I felt we must take a brief moment… Continue Reading Wovember Words: Man's best friend
on Ahead of this week’s Friday Night Vi-EWE-ing, Louise has fallen into the archive rabbit hole again to bring you an early WOVEMBER matinee. Not so heavy on the words, the film in question is Jenny Gilbertson’s silent film, In Sheep’s Clothing (1932) Jenny Gilbertson, nee Brown, was born in Glasgow at the turn of the… Continue Reading Wovember (lack of) Words: In Sheep's Clothing
on As well as here you can find Team WOVEMBER on Facebook and Twitter and on Ravelry. Louise looks at how the world of wool operates in social media and introduces us to some of her favourite Tweeters! Who can remember the times before social media? Although find it odd that things like cassette tapes and dial… Continue Reading The Daily Bleat
on Following the earlier post about sheep collars there was the mention of a food very specific to Shetland – reestit mutton. Here at WOVEMBER we like to celebrate everything the sheep has to offer and thought we should look a little further at this. Reestit mutton has been a home-killed and cured meat in Shetland for… Continue Reading Wovember Words: Reestit mutton soup
on In week one of WOVEMBER we met Sally Antill who discussed the unique fleeces of the Soft Fell sheep that she and her husband, Michael, breed and their involvement in a fantastic community ‘sheep to shawl’ event, in Northumberland. Today Sally is here again to discuss the evolution of the breed, one which produces a… Continue Reading Sally Antill: Evolution of the Soft Fell sheep #2
on Last week TEAM WOVEMBER featured sheep bells in Wovember Words. This prompted Louise to look into something touched on in Stella Sutherland’s poem (also last week) with the Shetland Ewe wearing her “hard triangle of sticks”. As a small child I was often surrounded by sheep on our croft on Bressay and was quite familiar with their… Continue Reading Wovember Words: branks, yokes, pokes or bjoags?
on Here at WOVEMBER we have already looked at some of the actions and words which have historically been associated with shepherding. Here we have another action associated with wool working, which has it’s own unique method and measure. The ends of a length of newly woven cloth are sewn together to make a circle, and… Continue Reading Wovember Words: Waulking
on Earlier this year I read Knitting Yarns, (Norton, 2013), which is a beautiful collection of essays from authors such as Anita Shreve, Sue Grafton and Elizabeth Berg. It is a superb anthology exploring relationships with wool and knitting and is truly worth a browse in your library or bookshop. One of the absolute stand out… Continue Reading Wovember Words: Where it begins