Giveaway Reminder & Wovember

 

Hello All!

I'm back at home following a couple of trips away in London and Northern Ireland. I've been catching up on my blog reading so thought I'd remind you that you have until Sunday to enter the knitting giveaway. I will announce the winners on Sunday evening.

I also wanted to draw your attention to Wovember, a month-long celebration of all things woollen with the aim of increasing awareness about woollen fabrics. Wovember is the brainchild of Kate Davies and Felicity Ford and the blog includes loads of interesting information about wool, its history and uses. The have a Hall of Shame, highlighting some examples of high street retailers who list garments as containing wool or being made of wool, when in fact no wool has been involved. Naughty! And very misleading for the consumer. How will people appreciate wool if they think that their cheapo acrylic high street sweater is made of wool? Linked to this is a petition aimed at encouraging clearer labelling of products containing wool:

We the undersigned believe that:

1. In the world of contemporary fashion and retail, WOOL, together with the skills, crafts and labour involved in its production, is currently being devalued through widespread misuse of the words and qualities associated with it.

2. Consumers are being misled, and ignorance about WOOL is being promoted, through spurious branding, marketing and product descriptions.

We agree that:
1. A garment should not be described as ‘wool’ or turn up with the search-term ‘wool’ or ‘wool rich’ unless its sheep’s wool content is more than 50%.

2. A garment with a sheep’s wool content of between 20% and 50% should only be described with the term ‘wool mix’ or ‘wool blend’ (ie not ‘wool’ or ‘wool rich’).

3. The word WOOL should refer to sheep’s wool only, and there should be a clarification of trading standards to distinguish between different animal fibres (angora, alpaca, cashmere, and so on) which also possess their own unique properties, qualities and cachet.

4. When a garment’s fabric is composed of mixed fibres with a sheep’s wool content of less than 50%, the word YARN should be used in place of wool when describing its composition.

5. Constituent fibres of a fabric should always be listed in proprortionate, descending order on a garment label, and only the first two constituent fibres should be used in the product title, marketing, or description (eg, if a garment is made up of 50% viscose, 30% cotton, 20% polyamide, 5% angora and 5% wool, only viscose and cotton should be used in the product title, marketing, or description.).

(Taken from petition here)

Another part of Wovember is a competition, with prizes supplied by Jamieson & Smith, for photographs that encapsulate the idea of 100% wool. I've entered, and there are lots of great photographs in the gallery.

If you love wool, do have a look and sign the petition 

K x