Supporting Wovember

One of my favourite blogs is needled. Kate Davis writes wonderful posts about all aspects of textiles but especially wool and and is a talented designer producing beautiful knitting patterns.

I have been following her recent posts about the meaning of the term "wool". I like to wear natural fibres and I have been frustrated to find that garments labelled as lambswool are not actually 100% wool but a mix of wool and acrylic. What I hadn't realised until I read this post was that some garments are labelled wool when they contain very little or even no wool.

It seems that the term wool is no longer used for yarn produced from the fleece of a sheep but is used to describe any soft yarn that can be knitted or woven and therefore many "wool" garments  are not wool at all.

To bring attention to the misleading nature of the term wool and to endeavour to bring back the original meaning of the word, i.e. made from the fleece of the sheep, Kate together with Felicity Ford have launched Wovember. You can read more about the project here

To support Wovember, I have signed the petition and I will be wearing lots of woolly clothes all month. November which can be a bit grey, damp and chilly in the UK is the perfect month to wrap up in wool and I will be choosing from my pile of handknitted wool jumpers and cardigans.

I also have a range of scarves to choose from although not all are 100% wool, there is a little bit of mohair/silk blend and a cotton mix in a couple of them.

I will of course be wearing socks all month but these are all a 75%wool/25%acrylic mix which I find wears much better than pure wool and these particular ones have been through the washing machine many, many times!

Wovember is not against wool mixes and blends or even against fabrics with no wool content just that the labelling should be accurate and not misleading.

If the label says wool then it should have come from a sheep.