p/hop’s birthday is next week! They grow so fast don’t they?!

As you know we’re gonna throw a party to celebrate p/hop’s second year of existence and I was just wondering who we should invite… Of course, there’s you guys, you’re always invited (after all, you’re the ones who have nurtured p/hop and watched himher grow ), but we thought maybe you’d like to invite some friends?

At the office here, we’re asking the lovely people at Woman’s Hour to drop in (but we do understand that they’re very busy and probably get invited to a lot of parties). We are also inviting Perri Lewis and we thought India Knight might like to come too (trouble is we can’t find her contact details so maybe you guys could invite her via twitter?)

If you lot have any other suggestions for people to invite, especially if they have a blog,  leave their name in the comments and we’ll work out how we might get in touch…………

If you’re not sure how to get involved in the birthday party and you’d like to, details are here and here…. If you’d like to re-live last year’s, you can go here (you’ll need to scroll down a bit)….

Look forward to reading all your posts next week!

p/hop is off to Ireland. We are very excited. While the main part of our project is based in cyberspace our contact with people in real life has been limited to the UK so it will be great to spread the p/hop word to the visitors to the Knitting and Stitching Show at the RDS, Dublin from Thursday 28th to Sunday 31st October.

We’ve added a way to donate in Euros. You can click the link to MSF Ireland’s p/hop page. Or, you can click the big link on the right —–>

If you are visiting the Knitting and Stitching show please stop by stand N11 and say hello to the MSF Ireland team. I (Claire) will be there on Thursday helping out too and trying to resist buying lots of gorgeous Irish yarn.

We’d like to say a big thank you to Twisted Thread for donating the stand at the show.

It’s a busy old month at p/hop HQ. As well as setting up p/hop with MSF Ireland, preparing for the Birthday-blog-along, moving a yarn mountain, and going to Ally Pally we are going to Fibre Flurry!!!

I’m really looking forward to this event which will be full of excellent stands as well as p/hop. There will be a raffle which Mikayla the lovely organiser is putting together for us. As well as the vendors donatating prizes you have the chance to win something very special. You may remember earlier in the year our brilliant supporters in the Ravelry group made a barn raising blanket which was raffled off at I knit. They also made this stunning Lizard Ridge blanket which designer Laura Aylor kindly gave us permission to use.

I can’t wait to see it in real life. Thank you to everyone who made a square, donated yarn and to Roo who sewed the blanket together.

We will also be launching two new patterns at Fibre Flurry so please stop by the stand and say hello. Don’t worry if you can’t make to Fibre Flurry, the new patterns will be launched on the website on the first week of November to coincide with the birthday blog-a-long. Have you signed up yet?

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Fibre Flurry is on Saturday 30th October at St Nicolas Place. King’s Norton, Birmingham. Please see the Fibre Flurry website for more details.

It’s easy to take part in the p/hop super duper great big birthday blog along.

Just follow these simple steps:

1) Email us at p-hop@london.msf.org with your username (eg your blog name or Ravelry name) and blog address to get your password.

2) Go to www.p-hop.co.uk/wp-admin and log in using the username and password you are sent.

3) Write your post. If you haven’t used WordPress before there are guidelines here.

4) Select the category ‘Birthday Blogger‘

5) Click on Save Draft. (We’re trusting you not to publish yourself). We will email you the URL for your post when it is published on the p-hop website or you can copy the Permalink which appears under your post title. Use this URL and the birthday image below to link from your regular blog to the p/hop birthday blog to make sure your readers visit us. (You will need to copy the image and post it on your own blog, then link the image to your p/hop post by highlighting it, then adding the link as you would for a text link.)

6) Please remember to spread the word and tell everyone you know you are blogging here. We want this event to be MASSIVE.

7) Thank you very much. Pat yourself on the back, give yourself three cheers and go and do something fun.

p/hop your Ravatar to show your support for p/hop and MSF on Ravelry. Thanks to Hilltop Katie for her designs.

In a couple of weeks time we will be celebrating p/hop’s second birthday. We’ve had a fab second year visiting loads of knitting festivals, meeting hundreds (if not thousands) of lovely knitters with lots of fantastic new patterns, a brilliant response to the Haiti earthquake and nearly £20, 000 and over US$3500 raised for MSF since p/hop started.

To celebrate we’re having a blog-a-long again. It was great fun last year and you, yes YOU, stop looking over your shoulder, are invited to take part.

It’s really easy to join in. To sign up send us an email to P-HOP@london.msf.org saying “I’d like to blog-a-long with p/hop” and tell us your username (it could be your Ravelry name) and we’ll send you your password.

During the week of 1-5 November write your blog post on our blog, leaving a message on your blog saying you’ve given us your post as a birthday present. We have a nice image you can copy for this coming soon (this is last year’s).

If lots of people sign up, and we’re hoping they will, we’ll extend the blog along to the following week. Gatecrashers are welcome (provided they adhere to MSF’s ethos )

In the meantime here are some invites you can use on your blog to help us spread the word. Looking forward to seeing you here soon…

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If you’re off to the Knitting and Stitch Show at Alexandra Palace this weekend please stop by stand RCG11 which is run by the knitastic people at Stitch London. We didn’t get a stand of our own there but dynamic and generous Stitch London have kindly given us a corner of their stand which has copies of the Stina, Trinity and Cranford Mitts patterns for you to pick up in return for a donation to MSF as well as samples of those patterns for you to touch, examine and sniff (don’t worry about sniffing yarn in a hall full of knitters, it’s perfectly normal there).

If you’re familiar with those patterns it’s worth stopping by anyway to look at the Stitched Selves which are on display. They look brilliant and you might spot someone you know in knitted form.

If you can’t make it to Ally Pally there are still loads of pattern books and yarn from the Loop Yarn Swap still available for donations to MSF on Ravelry. Please take a look. The yarn mountain in my flat is going down but it’s still a mountain. Thank you and Happy knitting.

Part of the yarn mountain.

Loop Knitting shop in Islington held a yarn swap for MSF on Sunday. There was a sale table for people selling off unwanted stash and another for straightforward donations to MSF. The shop was buzzing and there were some interesting yarns on offer…

…there was also cake…

Susan, owner of Loop, and Juju sampling the cake

and I spied Liz (who thought of the yarn swapping event) knitting some Cranford Mitts.

It was a really fun event and is the sort of thing which can be organised on a much smaller scale at your local knitting group.

£442.39 was raised for MSF on the day. There is loads of yarn, pattern books and magazines left over which I’m gradually adding to the p/hop group on Ravelry to help raise even more money for hygeine kits, logisticians, vaccinations and all the other life saving work MSF does. If you have any unloved yarn in your stash you can offer it to MSF too through our Ravelry group.

A huge thank you to the staff at Loop, Liz who came up with the idea for the event and everyone who came and swapped yarn.

Here’s a quick update of what’s happening with p/hop over the next couple of months.

1) Loop knitting shop in Islington, London, UK are holding a yarn swapping event for MSF on Sunday 3rd October. We’ll be going along with some p/hop patterns and sample knits. If you can’t make the yarn swap you can still use your unwanted stash to raise money for MSF by offering it for a donation in the p/hop group on Ravelry.

2) We’re going to be at Fibre Flurry on 30th October. Yippee. It should be loads of fun.

3) p/hop turns TWO!!! Blimey, where has the last year gone. The blog-a-long worked so well last year that we’re going to do it again this year over the first (and maybe the second) week of November. There are also a couple of new patterns in the pipeline which will be released then.

We launched a new sock pattern at the I Knit weekender. Cosy, DK ribbed socks by generous and talented designer Erssie Major.

When we take p/hop to festivals our sock patterns are greatly admired but lots of knitters confess to their fear of sock knitting so miss out on making our fabulous patterns. I remember knitting my first socks and being daunted by phrases bandied about by more experienced knitters such as turning the heel, gussets and grafting toes. I now know sock knitting really isn’t hard but to help you sock virgins out there we have a great new pattern to help you through your first pair.

These cosy socks are made using DK weight yarn and 4mm needles so you can quickly work your way through the cuff to the heel and discover how simple it actually is. Erssie has also written a guide to sock construction to guide you through the process as well as clear instructions in the pattern itself.

If you are a more experienced sock knitter these will make a great quick project and the socks make fab wellie socks or toasty bed socks depending on the type of yarn you use. One of our test knitters made a pair from 100% Alpaca and they are gorgeous. I have to resist taking them home to wear.

So, potential new sock knitters, do you need any more convincing? Well it is October which means one thing, it’s Socktober Fest over on Ravelry. Go on, give yourself a challenge and make your first sock. Let us know how you get on.

Warning: When I took the plunge into sock knitting someone warned me it is addictive. Oh how I laughed. Two years later it’s the main thing I make. The upside of this addiction is I wore hand made socks all last winter. I didn’t have cold feet once.