Belmont Octarine Winter Hill is one of two Firespiral wraps being released at our Winter Wovenland event. At the time of writing there are still a few standard tickets available for the event, being held on the 12th of November 2016 in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, if you fancy joining us?!

This wrap was named after the next village along from mine, situated at the foot of Winter Hill. It is a sister wrap to the Bowland Octarine Birch Trees; they both share the same warp and use the same wool in the weft. They each have alternating wool/cotton yarns in the weft, although Bowland features a cool blue cotton where Belmont has a warmer apricot cotton in its place. They are both 75% combed cotton and 25% merino wool, with the wool yarn having been blended with cotton to make them more stable for machine washing.

The big difference between the two wraps is the structure of the weave used to create them. Whereas Bowland uses our looser Alchemy weave, Belmont is woven with our tighter Elements weave, giving both a different look to the cloth and also a very different wrapping experience.

Belmont feels thinner and smoother in hand, with the tighter weave pinning the thick wool down into the cloth. The passes have more grip as they slide over each other, and the bounce of the wool is concentrated by the more constricted weave to create a very elastic recoil- the stretch bounces back into place making for a very supportive carry even if you haven’t taken particular care with the tightening. Whilst it doesn’t have the same soft, wool handle to the touch and Bowland, it has equal supportive cushioning. The elements weave means that small pulls are less likely to occur in these wraps, although pulls are nothing to be afraid of in any case!!

Belmont needs to be washed a few times to allow the processing oils in the wool to be washed away; you will see the texture on the weft face start to develop as you do this.

We’ll have these wraps available for sale at Winter Wovenland, and any left after the event will be made generally available on our website.