For the last two p/hop birthdays we’ve held a blog-a-long in which you gave us a blog post as a present. This year we are giving you the chance to win a present from us and some of the wonderful yarn sellers who support p/hop.

When I visit yarn festivals a lot of the lovely vendors donate prizes for raffles. As we don’t always have a raffle at shows and as many of you can’t make it to knitting shows I’ve collected a wonderful stash of gorgeous, squishy yarns and other knitterly goodies which you now have a chance of winning!

While I was putting together the competition I initially thought about just holding one competition, but as we’ve got so much lovely yarn and books and with the festive season practically upon us I thought I’d spread out the love, the 12 days of p/hop if you will, so you have a chance of winning a super treat for yourself in the run up to Christmas.

So here is how it will work: Every week day, starting tomorrow, I will post a question here on the blog. All you have to do is email me the answer and we will pick a lucky winner at random.  Each day will have a different prize! There will be at least 12 competitions to enter giving you lots of opportunities to win though you will need to be quick as some competitions will have a short deadline!

Come back here tomorrow for you first opportunity to win something special.

To keep up-to-date with the competitions follow us on twitter.

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We are still accepting prizes so if you would like to donate something please get in touch via email p-hop@london.msf.org. A big thank you to everyone who has donated a prize.

p/hop is 3! Three! Drei! Trois! Tres!

Things have been a tad busy here at p/hop HQ so we’re a little tardy in celebrating our third birthday but there are some exciting things in the pipeline, or should that be on the needles?

First things first, a few weeks ago we reached our UK target of raising £30,000 for Médecins Sans Frontières MSF (Doctors Without Borders) which is marvellous. Here’s a MASSIVE THANK YOU to everyone who has made this happen!

Our third year has been pretty eventful. We won Just Giving’s Most Creative Fundraiser award back in January (You can spot me, yikes, on the award website and see Natalie collecting our award on their video). p/hop has been on the road to Woolfest (Cumbria), KnitNation (London), Fibre East (Bedford), The Yarn Cake Party(Glasgow), and Fibre Flurry(Birmingham). Knitters and crocheters have also taken ownership of p/hop organising their own yarn swaps, tea parties and knitting surgeries to raise money for MSF which is marvellous. We’ve had 10 fabulous new patterns donated and there are more on the way.  Our Ravelry group has been even busier and now has over 600 members who p/hop yarn online, organise Ebay autions and knit-a-longs, and spread the word. If you haven’t joined yet what’s stopping you?

While we’re on the subject of birthdays MSF turn 40 this year so we’ve decided our next goal is, gulp, £40,000. If you take a look at the donation page you’ll see the target is currently set at a more modest £32,012 to see if we can raise £2012 by 2012!

So here’s to our fourth year. If you’ve made a donation, given us a pattern, tweeted about us and helped spread the word give yourself a well deserved pat on the back, a slice of cake and a glass of your favourite tipple….

…. and then start thinking about how we are going to reach our £40,ooo goal!

The Yarn Cake, Scotland’s only dedicated knitting cafe, is hosting is hosting a special yarn swap event to raise funds for Medecins Sans Frontieres using the p/hop principle on Saturday 10th December from 5.30-8.30

There will be a festive atmosphere in the shop for the evening of the swap with snacks and wine, and you can still stock up on all your usual knitting and crochet necessities.

Donations have already been recieved of Louisa Harding, Rowan, and Mirasol yarns amongst other goodies. More details can be found from the Ravelry thread about the swap here.

Donations of good quality yarn, patterns or other needlecraft items are welcome up until the 8^th December; please leave them with the friendly staff at The Yarn Cake

148 QUEEN MARGARET DRIVE, G20 8NY

It’s quite a while after the fabulous Fibreflurry, but quite a lot has happened between then and now (including us reaching our £30,000 target!).

It was my first show manning the p/hop stall (while the lovely Clare had a much needed holiday) and we had a lovely day chatting to all the visitors. One thing that did impress me was how many people already knew about p/hop, listening to people come up to the stall, and turning to the person next to them to explain what p/hop is all about was fantastic.

Laying out the stall required a bit of imagination as we didn’t have anything to display the gorgeous samples on. In the end we put all the samples on the printed patterns and I think it worked quite well. P/hop now has so many patterns that we managed to fill the whole table with them, but of course that’s not to say we wouldn’t love to have more patterns, the lace shawls were particularly popular, as were the ubiquitous Cranfords (as mentioned on the BBC Radio 4 today programme!).

Thank you to the lovely YarnAddict Anni designer of the Trinity Shawlette for permission to use her photo of the stall.

We managed to raise a fantastic £320.64, so a big thank you to all the knitters who donated for patterns, the designers who donate them, everyone who I badgered to buy a raffle ticket, and the stall holders for donating the prizes. Also thank you to the lovely Fibreflurry team for looking after us so well. (oh and thank you to my Mum who came along for the day as well!)

Imagine my delight when I woke up to the following tweet this morning

After some twitter based detective work I discovered the lovely Gerard Alt, of long time p/hop supporters IKnitLondon, had been on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme talking about knitting on TV. The main topic was THAT JUMPER from the top Danish crime drama The Killing (or Forbrydelsen) but he also gave our Cranford Mittens pattern and the talented Jane Lithgow a mention. Thank you Gerard.

So if you’ve found your way here from the Today programme, welcome!

We’re a knitting fundraiser for the incredible and inspiring emergency medical aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières MSF (Doctors Without Borders). You are more than welcome to download any of our beautiful knitting patterns. All we ask in return is you make a donation to MSF/DoctorsWithoutBorders based on how much pleaseure you’ll get from your knitting pattern. It’s as simple as that.

If you already know about us but missed the radio item you can “listen again” here.

As always you can follow us on twitter @msf_phop and get the latest news about MSF’s life saving work at @MSF_uk

Hi, my name is Susan and I am really pleased to have been asked to write a blog post for P/hop. I’m a stay-at-home mum to two small boys, and knitting helps me to stay (relatively) sane.

I prefer small projects that I can finish quickly, and socks are a particular favourite of mine. There are so many beautiful feminine patterns out there, I could be knitting them for the rest of my life and never make them all! However I just couldn’t find what I wanted to knit for the men in my family – simple, versatile socks that are plain enough for the most conservative dressers, but not insanely boring to knit! I also wanted them to be stretchy to accommodate wider feet, and have nice round toes to allow good circulation.

I finally gave up looking and designed my own pattern, and these are the socks I have knit for my grandfather and for my father-in-law. When “Papa” Lyle passed away earlier this year, I decided I wanted to do something in his memory, and so I wrote up the pattern to share with p/hop. I know that MSF is an organisation that does exactly the kind of work of which my Papa would have approved. I have named the pattern after him, and I hope you will enjoy knitting it to keep your own loved ones warm.

Thank you all for supporting p/hop, and Happy Knitting!