P/hop has asked me to introduce my pattern – Jacqueline.

One of the runaway successes of p/hop has been the Cranford mitts pattern – 600+ projects showing on Ravelry. I’ve made a number of pairs and have knitted them while manning the p/hop stand at Knit Nation and in my breaks while volunteering at the Olympic fencing test event.

In fact I’d not worn fingerless gloves or mitts for years until I was introduced to Cranfords, and now I can’t live without them. But I like to have my wrists covered so started thinking about longer mitts and when I wanted to make a gift for a friend this long cuff design was the obvious way forward.

And because I wouldn’t have been inspired without the Cranfords, it was obvious to me I should write up the pattern for p/hop. Well, that and having spent a day as a volunteer in the MSF office and seen and heard first-hand the importance of its work.

The Jacquelines’ ribbed cuff can be shortened or folded to the length you want, the palms are smooth and practical, and the cable design is a little like an Argyle sock design. It’s made up of very simply two stitch cables so is straightforward even if you are new to cables. In my tests it looks best in a single lighter colour.

Mainly I hope you enjoy the pattern and that it inspires variations and other fingerless mitt ideas.

That’s the great thing about p/hop, you raise money by being creative with a recipient in mind (you, family, friends) rather than hoping your squares really end up in a blanket somewhere in the world.

So I wish you happy knitting and warm wrists.

Bronagh

This frothy lace Möbius cowl is aptly named after Minerva, the Roman Goddess of wisdom, crafts, medicine and doctors. She could also be the goddess of p/hop.

The Minerva Cowl pattern has been designed and donated to p/hop by the generous and talented Anna Richardson aka @onehandknits and you can find more details about the pattern and the PDF here.

The pattern is very versatile and can be knitted as a single or double wrap cowl.

If you are going to Unravel at the weekend please go and say hello to Anna along with Sarah from the p/hop-supporting Undercover Owl.

This is our 40th pattern, which is very exciting. We’ll have a new crochet pattern coming soon making it 41 patterns raising money for MSF. Wowzers!

I’m Helena Callum and I am writing this guest blog post for p/hop to introduce my new pattern, which is now available as a p/hop pattern.

Like all p/hop patterns, it can be downloaded in return for a donation to Médecins Sans Frontières .

The pattern is for a pair of colourful fingerless mitts using DK-weight yarn.

Several colours are used, but because the stitch pattern uses slipped stitches, only one colour is used in any round.

The mitts are worked in the round and incorporate a peasant thumb (sometimes called an afterthought thumb) which means that you just knit a straight tube for the hand, with no worries about remembering to increase for a thumb gusset.

Why are they called “Ermintrude”?

Well, though the stitch pattern looks most obviously like a brick wall, for some reason it reminded me of a cattle grid.

But a very pretty, soft and gentle cattle grid -suitable perhaps for a pretty, soft and gentle cow such as Ermintrude from the Magic Roundabout.

I hope you enjoy the pattern and supporting MSF!

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!

He’s so small, to teeny tiny, but that only adds to Teeny Tiny Teddy’s cuteness. Here’s our latest pattern, designed and donated by Alessandra Parsons.

Teeny Tiny Teddy is only 5 cm tall when standing so would make a great keyring toy, Christmas or nursery decoration, gift, or companion for your hamster.

This wee bear is straightforward to make so is ideal for a new knitter looking for a more involved project or a super quick knit for an experienced knitter.

It is easy to make a larger Teddy using larger needles and thicker yarn. If you are new to knitting and baffled by which needle sizes to use with which yarn look at the label on your ball of wool which should have a recommendation for which needles will suit your yarn. This will depend on how tightly or how loosly you knit but doesn’t matter too much on a project like this.

You can find Teeny Tiny Teddy pattern here.

Clyd is welsh for warmth, and this pattern is designed to do just that, conserve warmth.
I came up with the idea after a discussionin the p/hop Ravelry group, Clare had said that they would love to have more patterns suitable for beginner knitters, and a few other people had discussed designing patterns that were good for handspun yarns.
This pattern matches both of these things, it’s all knit (no purl stitches), increases are by using knit front and back, and there’s a single yarn over to make a button hole, decreases are using knit 2 together. It would be a great pattern to use as an introduction to knitting, definitely more enjoyable the traditional endless garter stitch scarf!

It uses just 55m of Aran or Heavy Worsted Weight yarn, so would also be a good use of those precious scraps of handspun yarn, but would work great in any commercial yarn base too.
I have a headband in a similar shape that I get lots of use out of it in Winter (and Autumn and Spring given the Welsh weather!), the button fastening, and shaping at the back mean you can move your head around lots, without the headband getting in the way.
If you’re an experienced knitter it’s a quick knit, so would be great for last minute Christmas presents.

To download Clyd visit the pattern page here.

We have a smashing new pattern for you as part of our Wool Week celebrations. The gorgeous Waterhouse Mitts were designed for p/hop by the generous Patricia Clift Martin and are a great introduction to stranded knitting.

Here’s Patricia’s introduction to her pattern:

These mitts represent an early foray into stranded colourwork for me. I have always found colourwork to be a bit intimidating (and I’m still not brave enough for steeks!) but this project showed me that I really didn’t need to be. Inspired by the wonderful architectural detail in Manchester Town Hall they are a simple but striking project for an advanced beginner. As the new academic year approaches these would be a lovely gift to make in school or college colours.

If you are daunted by colour work these are small enough to not be overwhelming and the straightforward pattern is easy to get the hang of. There’s a great video tutorial on the knittinghelp.com (scroll down for the colourwork video, there are videos for both continental and english styles of knitting).

You can find the pattern here, as always for a donation to MSF.

Stay tuned as we will have more fantastic new patterns here very soon…

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.

I designed these socks in Cambridge and from the first I thought of them as ‘Cambridge socks’. The travelling cables remind me of the gentle meander of the river Cam around the backs of the colleges. My sample socks were knitted in a colour that is almost Cambridge blue (a sort of strange greenish -grey). But I am an Oxford girl through and through, and I wanted to reflect that in the name of the socks too. The official designation for a Cambridge degree is Cantab. (short for Cantabridgiensis), but in Oxford we always scathingly refer to Cambridge students as Tabs. So, when you are feeling kindly towards these socks, you may call them your Cantabs, but when you want to throw them across the rooms in frustration, they will be Tabs, spoken with all the scorn of an 800 year old rivalry to back you up!

The pattern has been designed to fit as many different shapes and sizes of feet and ankles as possible. The rib gives it lots of stretch, the heel flap and the horseshoe heel turn give some extra room, and the travelling cable adds interest to the pattern. The construction of these socks is somewhat unusual and there are times when you just have to blindly trust the pattern, but I promise it works.  I would say that this pattern is intermediate difficulty.
I hope you all enjoy knitting and wearing these as much as I enjoyed designing them.  You can download the (Can)tab pattern here and don’t forget to make your donation to p/hop too.

P.S. Thanks to Ruth (Grandy on Ravelry) for her beautiful photo of her gorgeous (Can)tabs.

Dear Knitter,

As you might have realised from the name of the socks I am a Harry Potter fan. What we knitters always look out for is the latest Christmas offerings from Molly Weasley’s
needles, both in description in the book, and visually on the films. It has always seemed that her knitting for the boys of the family, and often Harry, are a little hurried
and done because there was not a huge amount of money in the house hold.

After the battles and the wars, and the family had grown up and left home, I began to wonder what Molly and Arthur Weasley would do with their time. I knew that Arthur would be happy in his shed with his Muggle bits and pieces, but what about Molly, with time and stillness on her hands, what would she knit? She’d often knitted for her boys and Ginny too, but what could she knit that was a little bit special? What could she knit for the possible daughters in law? Socks seemed to be the perfect answer, and for all the daughters, what better than lace socks? Or perhaps during a lull in family life Molly treated herself to a pair of these?

Molly Weasley's Gift Socks

The lace pattern was based upon one in the Barbara Walker Treasury series of books, and charted to be knitted in the round. While it is a pretty lace pattern it is not complicated, and I and my test knitter found it a joy to see the pattern emerge. I have one other sock pattern donated to P/hop and always had this in mind when I wrote this pattern.

Close up of vine lace pattern

Everyone in life needs a little help, even in every day life, but when disaster strikes they need all the help we can give them. So I hope you enjoy the socks, and the pleasure of knitting them, and I know that the money raised is going to a wonderful and worthwhile cause, Doctors Without Borders, MSF.

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A big thank you to Susan for another great pattern (click here to go to the pattern page) which will help MSF weave their humanitarian magic around the world. If you like this pattern please take a look at Susan’s other p/hop pattern, the popular Ruth’s Harvest Socks.