My blog post about our fab weekend at KnitNation is coming soon (once my brain starts working again) but here’s a quick reminder that we are at Fibre East festival near Bedford this weekend. We will be in marquee A, stand 27.

We’ll be raffling the two colourful blankets made by our very own Ravelry group as well as other prizes and will have all our patterns and samples for your perusal.

It will be great to see you there, along with loads of brilliant vendors and some sheep.

More details are on the Fibre East website.

I am not a sports fan.  I don’t watch football or rugby; I barely know what golf or Formula 1 are.  The one day that I spent at a cricket match was possibly the most tedious of my life.  Admittedly I do watch Wimbledon, where I like to keep a close eye on Rafael Nadal’s shirt changes.  Anyway, I digress.  I might not do sport, but I definitely do tea.  And I have to approve of sports which have rules about stopping for tea.  So civilised.

What better to adorn the table of a cricket tea than a tea pot with its very own cricket sweater?  When I first thought of this, I was certain someone must have already written a pattern for a cricket cosy, but after scouring the internet, it seemed not.  So I wrote my own and I’m very happy to donate it to p/hop, to extend their pattern range into non-garments.

Perhaps you could have your own p/hop cricket tea and raise money at the same time? Or just knit a couple for cricket-mad tea-drinking friends.  Simply pick their team colours and you have the perfect personalised gift.

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Thanks Ros.

You can download the Cricket Tea Cosy pattern here and you can find all the donation links in the side bar.

We don’t normaly do what I am about to do at p/hop. We are a steady fundraiser for Médecins Sans Frontières meaning there’s money in the pot as and when it is needed. Our blog is usually about knitting and how we, the knitting community,  raise money and awareness for MSF.  However the dreadful situation facing hundreds of thousands of people, ordinary people, trying to live their lives and raise their children in Somalia, is dire.

You can read more about it on the MSF website, or see it on the news (when they are reporting on more than the immoral behaviour of a newspaper) but here is a summary.

• As prolonged drought grips Somalia, people are losing their livestock, homes and lives. Poor harvests, rising food prices, continuing violence and chronic poverty have further contributed to a sudden rise in malnutrition rates.

• Almost one in three children is suffering from severe malnutrition

• The security situation in Somalia is complicated, but because MSF is an impartial medical organisation and relies on charitable donations instead of government funding, it continues to be the only medical charity working in many areas.

• There are hundreds of children and adults arriving at MSF clinics every day. Many of them need expert medical care for malnutrition, often whilst battling other severe conditions such as malaria and pneumonia.

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The knit signal needs raising. The word needs spreading. We need to donate!

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Donating through our usual sites takes about a week to get to MSF. If you donate through the Somalia appeal it takes two days.

I know times are tough for a lot of us at the moment, however even the smallest donation will make a difference and enable MSF to continue their excellent and life-saving work.

And if you quite rightly found the picture of Asad at the top of the blog post distressing you can see how he is after treatment by MSF on the MSF website here.

Thank you for reading this.

I’m writing this from under a ginormous pile of patterns and samples getting read for our next outings to Knit Nation and Fibre East.

KnitNation is this weekend at Imperial College London. Come and say hello to us in the Knit-Tea Salon were we are launching a very appropriate new pattern. If you can’t make it to KnitNation fear not, the pattern will soon be available here on the website. We’re really looking forward to KnitNation as we had a great time there last year.

We’ll be at the brand new Fibre East festival near Bedford the following weekend (23rd & 24th July). I’m getting excited about this as there will be sheep shearing demonstrations as well as lots of great yarn and equipment vendors.

If you can’t make it to either of these fantastic shows fear not as we will be heading north for more events later in the year. Watch this space for more details…

There’s a brand spanking new way to donate to our Just Giving fundraiser using your mobile phone via Vodaphone’s JustTextGiving service.

Your donation will go directly to MSF and no money is deducted for admin fees.

Just text message PHOP99 £(insert amount you would like to donate) and text this to 70070.

You will then receive a receipt by text and the gift aid option.

MSF receives the donation and Gift Aid within 10 days of the end of the month you sent your text in.

This year marvellous p/hop supporter and volunteer beanz52 (aka Mary) took p/hop to Woolfest for us. Here is her review of the weekend.

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I went to Woolfest for the first time last year. I met some old friends and made some new ones and visited the P/hop stand.
This year I was in charge of the stand! So we drove over to Cockermouth on Thursday. There is a point in the journey along the A66 when you suddenly realise you have left the Pennines are coming into the Lake District.

And before you know where you are you’re at Mitchell’s Lakeland Livestock Centre in Cockermouth. For most of the year it is a cattle market. But for two days a year it becomes the centre of the knitters’ world. In case you have missed the point, p/hop is the knitter’s fundraiser for MSF and Woolfest is a great opportunity to spread the word – and the patterns.
MrBeanz and I constructed a stand from a couple of trestle tables and a very long lath. We left most of the decoration until Friday morning, as the local birds are known to roost in the sheds.

On Friday morning it was transformed by the lovely knitted samples of p/hop patterns.

Soon there were regular crowds around the stall, choosing patterns, finding out what we are about and meeting old friends.

Particularly popular were the Trinity Shawlette, the Crocus Pocus shawl, Cranford Mitts and Stina, the baby kimono which captured the heart of many grandmothers! There were also requests for more crochet patterns, and a pattern for baby socks and a shrug. If you are inspired by this and would like to submit a design please take a look at our pattern submission guidelines.

The time flew by as we talked to steady flow of people, listened to the music from next door – and were even entertained by clog dancing:

And the end result? We had raised £776.58 to support the work of MSF!

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A huge thank you to Beanz52 for all her hard work running an excellent p/hop stand. We would also like to say thank you to the organisers of Woolfest for donating our stand and exhibition space, our other volunteers who helped at Woolfest and to everyone who stopped by the stall.