My absolute favourite room at Wool House. Rachel and I just felt at home and totally at ease in here. A room like this with high ceilings, big windows, fireplace and hardwood flooring is my idea of the perfect crafting room. Add balls of wool in scrumptious colours and you have Heaven On Earth.

That knitted chair and lampshade!!

Forget about Pinterest for your inspiration, this old school mood board is so much better.

Those granny squares are beautiful aren’t they? Don’t forget to make and post yours to Country Homes & Interiors for their Crochet Club to raise money for Mencap.

I have a few things going on over the next two weeks (Genoa yarnbomb this weekend!! and Surbiton Food Festival yarnbomb next week!!) so I’ll start working on my grannies in April. They’ll be an excellent project to take on the train to work, leaving me free to work on my next Japanese pattern top in the evenings. Yes, I said next. The blueish Japanese top is finished (I want to wear it in Genoa this weekend) and I’ve already bought the yarn for Japanese top number 2!

Speaking of the Surbiton Food Festival yarnbomb, if you’ve crocheted fruit for me to use in the yarnbomb, you need to get them to me before 29 March please.

One last thing before I forget, Wool House is free and it’s open until Sunday 24 March 2013. You really should go if you are in the London area. There are daily events, including a Rowan knitting workshop held in the Craft Room, that you can attend. For free. Details are here.

So last night it was Rachel, of TheLittleRoomofRachell, and I at Wool House at Somerset House. Such fun!

Honestly, it was a great couple of hours but I have to say it wasn’t all due to being surrounded by wool – it was the lovely company I had. Rachel is such a lovely person and we got on so well! You would think that with both of us being bloggers, crocheters and crafters it would be obvious that we would get on, but you never know with these things. People can so easily have a “blogging persona” and of course we make our own assumptions about people based on what we read, so it could have gone horribly wrong. But it didn’t. A Blogworld friend is now a Realworld friend too 🙂
As I explained in this post, Wool House is the work of the Campaign for Wool. They took over ten rooms in Somerset House and filled the rooms with all things wool. It was heavily focused on the interior decorating uses of wool which made for stunning rooms (and the most luxuriously squishy carpets to wander upon.)

Below are collages of four of rooms that stood out for me: Bedroom designed by Kit Kemp, Nursery designed by Donna Wilson, Natural Room designed by Josephine Ryan and Modern Room designed by Anne Kyyro-Quinn.

In the Modern Room, one wall is covered with Curved Laine, a three-dimensional acoustic sound absorbing panel made with 100% wool felt, designed by Anne Kyyro-Quinn. The ottomans are 100% wool felt as well.
The knitted creature in the Nursery is obviously one of Donna’s own designs, as is the huge knitted cloud mobile.

I like the huge embroidered headboard in the Bedroom. It’s by Pippa Caley as is my other favourite item, the cushion.

Josephine Ryan created a room that felt like a shepherd’s cottage. Its cozy, rustic look was very different to the other rooms at Wool House. The collection of 28 paintings of sheep are by current and previous artists of the Cill Rialaig artist retreat in Ireland. The knitted vessels, which are amazing, are by Hilary Anderson-Barr.

Rachel and I were lucky enough to get a place to attended a talk by four of the room designers. There was only space for 60 people and I think 58 of them were “in the industry” as the lady who sat next to me, said. Rachel and I made up the crafting contingent. We felt a teeny bit out of place amongst the Who’s Who of Interior Decorating, especially when they began talking about Bholi, Turnell and Gigon, Camira, Kai Linke, Misan Fabrics and other brands / designers that are totally foreign to us. It was a good talk though, and nice to be able to put a face to the designer names.

Wool is obviously an amazing natural fibre that can be used in interiors, tailoring and crafting. For me, it’s the crafting aspect that appeals and that’s why I’m doing a separate post just on the crafting room at Wool House. No photo collages for the Craft room, just lots of big photos the way us crocheters like it.