Thank you for your interest in being a Wovember 2022 partner.

Last year, I stepped into the Wovember void and created a photo and posting event on Instagram with prizes donated from the wool community. This year, I’m upgrading the Wovember experience to be more in line with the original incarnation, which can still be found at Wovember.com, along with the founders’ invitation to others to make Wovember their own.

What is Wovember?

Wovember is a month-long celebration that takes place every November that focuses on the wonderful qualities of wool, meaning the fiber produced by sheep. Whether or not other animals produce a fiber we can call wool us up for semantic debate. For Wovember’s purposes, we are specifically referring to the wool of sheep.
A proper understanding of how wool is produced and how it can be put to use has economic, social, environmental, and cultural effects on the world. Wovember seeks to help people understand wool better so they can make more informed purchasing decisions and better support those along the wool supply chain.
Wovember is also meant to help people, especially retailers and advertisers, realize that “wool” and “woolly” have actual meaning and should not be used to describe items that are not made of wool.

Participants on Instagram will be provided with a list of daily prompts by the event host, Anne Frost, on the @IThoughtIKnewHow Instagram account. Using those prompts, participants will create posts with an image and text related to those posts. To encourage participation, three prizes will be offered, one each for quality photography, quality information, and for posting for each of the prompts.

Additionally, a website will host longer posts, videos, and other content where participants can learn more and different things than can be hosted on Instagram. This website will also remain in place as a reference for the foreseeable future, allowing participants to easily find information through the year.

This year, a marketplace will debut on the website on November 28, 2022, to connect Wovember participants with wool-related businesses and services.

How to Partner with Wovember

There are three ways you can participate in Wovember as a designer, author, or business. You are invited to participate in one or all of the following ways.

First Option: Provide Content.

We are seeking wool-focused content to fill all 30 days of November. All content for Wovember should educate participants about wool in some way. Topics could touch on the cultural, historical, scientific, or technical aspects of wool. They can be personal or professional. Lighthearted or passionate. 

Suggested topics:

• A “day in the life” regarding your work with wool.
• A memory of wool, favorite characteristic or use of wool, or why wool inspired you to start your business.
• An excerpt of your wool-related book.
• Why you design or work with wool.
• A review of a selection of books or movies related to wool.
• Choose a wool-related phrase and talk about its origin.
• Share why you are so interested in a wool-focused heritage craft.
• Whatever you first thought of when you heard about this opportunity. The sky is the limit, as long as the focus is a positive take on wool.  

Content contribution guidelines:
You may provide content as a written piece or a video.
All contributions must be original unless they are an excerpt from a book you have written.

Blog posts should be 500-1000 words in length (give or take). At least one relevant photo should be included with the blog post, ideally more. Photos need to be well lit and in focus. The rights to the image(s) need to reside with you unless you have written permission from the original photographer or the image is in the public domain. All written content should be in English.

Writing should be proofread before submitting. Please take the time to read your pieces to yourself out loud and have a trusted friend read it and make suggestions about clarity. Make all improvements you can before you submit your piece. Poorly written pieces that are hard to understand will be rejected.

Videos should run 3 – 10 minutes in length and be hosted on your own YouTube channel. The rights to all content, including any music used, should reside with you or be in the public domain. Videos need to be filmed in a horizontal aspect ratio and be clearly filmed with a quality phone or video camera and have clear sound. All videos should be in English or have clear English subtitles. Videos that do not meet these expectations will be rejected.

Videos must be uploaded to YouTube by the submission deadline, but remain private unless the person has the direct link. Once your video submission is approved, you will be told what day and time to schedule the video to go live. The link to the video needs to be provided by the submission deadline so that the Wovember team can view the video and create the page for the event site in advance.

If your content is accepted, it will continue to exist on the website for the foreseeable future. Content will be scheduled to go live at 3 am eastern time each day of November. You will be informed what day your post will go live in advance so you can reference it in your social media plan.

The page that contains your content will have your social media information for people to follow you or your business, as well as a link to your business page or another location where people can find your product (for example, an Amazon link to your book).

People will be directed to your day’s content in an Instagram post at @Ithoughtiknewhow, the account that will be hosting Wovember 2022.

Because only 30 days of content is required for the event, and to prevent content overlap, please submit a proposal describing what you plan to create, how it relates to wool if it’s not obvious, and what form it will take (video, blog post, etc.) The Wovember team will inform you within 48 hours as to whether your content is approved for this year’s event. You will be provided with a link to submit the finished product. All content is due by October 28, 2022. 

Contributors will also be given a spot in the Wovember marketplace free of charge. You will submit your marketplace information when you submit your content. When you are ready to submit your content proposal, click here.

Second Option: Provide a Prize

Three prizes that will be offered this year will be for quality photography, quality written content in the Instagram posts about Wovember, and for posting every day of the event using the daily prompts. The winners of the first two prizes will be chosen by Anne Frost, the host of Wovember 2022. The last will be chosen as a random number draw from all the qualifying participants.

Each of the three prizes will be made up of a collection of items donated for the purpose. Prize contributions should be worth at least $25 in value. You may group lesser valued items together to meet this threshold. For instance, three $9 hand dyed minis could comprise one prize contribution.

All prize contributions should have a direct connection with wool. You are welcome to contribute one, two, or three prizes worth at least $25. If you contribute one or two prizes, the Wovember team will decide how they are grouped with other prizes to create the overall prize packages. If you contribute three prizes, each winner will receive one of the prizes.

Prizes will be awarded by December 3, 2022. Winners will be informed and asked to provide their contact information by December 10, 2022. The Wovember team will pass the winner’s information on to you.

You are required to mail the prize directly to the winner, wherever they live in the world, within 7 days of receiving their contact information. You will be responsible for the shipping charges. You may provide the winner with a code to your website so they may order their prize themselves, but the code should cover the complete cost of the item and the shipping charges as well. (For instance, a $25 gift card is fine if it covers the cost of a project bag and the shipping. It is not acceptable if it only covers part of the cost of a wool shirt. Likewise, a code for an item of their choosing should also include free shipping.)

You will need to submit details about the items, including their retail value, as well as an image of the prize(s). Each prize should be photographed separately. If you are grouping items together as one prize, they should be photographed together. Images need to be well lit, clear, and in focus. They should be cropped to 1000×1000 pixels. You may place a logo or watermark in the lower right hand corner of the image as long as it does not cover the image of the prize itself. All the information required about the prize(s) is due October 28, 2022.

Those who provide a prize will receive a spot in the Wovember Marketplace page free of charge. You will submit your marketplace information when you submit your prize information. When you are ready, follow this link to submit your prize information.

Third Option: Book a Place in the Wovember Marketplace

There are hosting and labor costs involved with running this event. If you do not wish to create content and are not interested in providing a prize, you may opt to book a place for your business in the Marketplace. Your booking fee will help offset the costs of the event.

Marketplace prices are as follows:

Authors, Designers, Wool Growers/Farms, Small maker-type businesses (dyers, sewists, spinners with 3 or fewer employees): $25
Retailers and Corporations (Local yarn stores, online shops, mill stores, museums, festival merchandise departments, clothing and yarn manufacturers, publishers, maker-type businesses with 4 or more employees): $50

Unsure where your business fits? Send Anne a message at anne@ithoughtiknewhow.com.

You must submit your marketplace information and booking fee by November 15, 2022. When you are ready to submit your booking information, please click here.

The Wovember Marketplace

A Marketplace page for those who sell wool and wool-related products will go live on November 28, 2022, aka Cyber Monday. This is the busiest online-shopping day of the year in the United States and many other countries. Those who provide content or prize(s) for Wovember will receive their marketplace spot for free. Or, you may book a place directly. Spaces in the marketplace will be limited and will be given first to those who provide content or prizes for Wovember.

Your spot in the marketplace will have an image of your chosen product or logo with up to 30 words of text to the side of it. The image serves as the link to take people to your online shop or other site where they can purchase your product (for example, a Ravelry page or Amazon page). Amazon links will be formatted as affiliate links to provide funding for the running of Wovember.

We recommend that you also provide a code, where possible, that provides a free gift with purchase, free shipping, or a discount, as these incentives have increased sales in the past for similar events. These codes can stay active for as long as you wish, but we recommend that you keep them active for at least November 27-December 5, 2022.

For simplicity’s sake, we recommend that everyone use the code WOVEMBER22. 

You can see a sample marketplace from a previous event here.

A Note about Deadlines

Written and Video contributions need to be submitted by October 28, 2022, with all required photos, if any.
Prize information, including clear photos, must be submitted by October 28, 2022.
Those who wish to book a spot in the marketplace must submit all required information and photos by November 15, 2022.

Our Wovember team will not chase people who have not made their deadline. Once your content, prize, or marketplace spot has been approved, please mark your calendars and plan your workflow so that you meet the deadline. We do understand that life happens, so reach out if something comes up, and we will try to accommodate you. However, if you do not meet the deadline listed above, you may not be included in Wovember this year.

Sharing this Information with Other Wool Businesses

If you have a colleague working in a wool-related field who may be interested in participating in Wovember in one of the ways above, please share this link with them directly. When all the available spaces have been claimed, we will remove this section of the website.

We ask that you do not share this site on social media or with the general public either by email or any other form of communication.

Thank you for taking the time to learn more about Wovember 2022! We hope you’ll join us in this year’s event and help spread the word about the wonderful, natural gift of wool!

Warm wishes,
Anne Frost, host of Wovember 2022