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!)

We’re back down south after a smashing weekend in Glasgow for the Glasgow School of Yarn run by the most excellent team from The Yarn Cake.

This was the first ever Glasgow School of Yarn (GSoY) and hopefully it won’t be the last as it was a brilliant event.

The event was held in the beautiful Mackintosh Church, designed by the famous Glaswegian architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Some of the classes took place in the church and it was great seeing Stephen West teaching in the upper pews. It looked like he was conducting a choir of knitters, which in a way, he was, a choir of colourwork!

As well as Stephen West, Amy Singer of Knitty.com, Carol Feller (aka Stolen Stitches and author of Contemporary Irish Knits), and Ann Kingstone of p/hop and Novel Knits were at the event. GSoY was very relaxed and the tutors had time to browse the market place and have a look at the stands and chat with knitters. There was a good mix of people who knew all about p/hop and those who had never heard of us.

I took the photo below before the marketplace officially opened, it was busy with people knitting and shopping all day.

Our patterns proved to be as popular as always,  including our recent designs, Cricket Tea Cosy, Waterhouse Mitts, Teeny Tiny Teddy, and we launched a brand new pattern, Lyle socks, which will be available on here shortly.

On the Friday night there was a party, with knitters knitting in the pews, a buffet and  donations for wine going to p/hop. There was a brilliant design competition at the event. Sadly I didn’t get a photo of the designs but they were of such a high standard and all reflected the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

I didn’t take as many photos as usual as I’d been sent by MSF with a film camera, evidence of which will be coming to the blog in November.

We raised a marvellous £464.60 as well as lots of good will and awareness of MSF.

I’d like to say a huge Thank you to the Yarn Cake team, especially Antje for organising such a well run and happy event, providing the vendors with cake was a stroke of genius and we will definitely be back. Thanks also to K who had me to stay and who instigated a trip to the pub in which we found beer with Stephen West’s name on.

I’m taking a couple of weeks off to do some travelling but the excellent HilltopKatie is taking p/hop to Fibre Flurry next weekend so if you’re in Birmingham please go and say hello.

When I’m back there will be some things happening for p/hop’s third birthday! Three? How did that happen? Stay tuned, there will be more cake and yarn to celebrate three years of knitters changing the world …

We don’t sit still for long here at p/hop.

We’ll be at The Yarn Cake’s exciting new Glasgow School of Yarn event on Friday 21st and Saturday 22nd October. It will be a lovely tie in as they are celebrating their first birthday and p/hop celebrating it’s third! Three!  Aw, they grow up so fast. Where does the time go?

There’s another BIG birthday coming up. In November MSF turns 40! Now I’d say something about life beginning at 40 but considering MSF have saved so many lives in their first 40 years it doesn’t seem quite right. Here’s to another 40 live saving years!

We are off to Fibre Flurry on Friday 28th and Saturday 29th October. Fibre Flurry was such a fantastic event last year, with a friendly atmosphere and far too much tempting yarn on sale. I can’t make it this year but HilltopKatie and her lovely mum will be running the p/hop stand so make sure you say hello to them.

Now I know it’s only September, the kids have only just gone back to school and we haven’t had Halloween yet, and what? Christmas? Well yes, because MSF Seasonal Greetings cards are now available through the MSF UK website. The cards either contain the message Seasons Greetings or are blank, making them excellent multi-purpose cards. There’s a nice selection of images so please take a look. Here are a few to whet your appetite.

At the end of July p/hop went on the road again. This time not far from London but far enough for it to feel like another country. The day started bright (or should that be bleary) eyed at St Pancras station where I met fellow p/hopper and designer extraordinare ProbablyJane who helped me carry p/hop on the train to Bedford. After a relaxing journey and several cups of coffee we were met by the equally marvellous SarahAbroad and her lovely husband who drove us through idyllic countryside to Scald End Farm where brand new festival Fibre East was taking place.

The fresh country air was invigorating and we soon had our stand set up in one of the marquees, where RosClarke, designer of the Cantab socks and Cricket Tea Cosy, joined in the fun. There was some minor faffing and adjustment, mostly about which direction our sock samples should face, but we were ready and raring to go. Most shows are fairly quiet in the first hour or so so we were overwhelmed by a huge wave of eager knitters who descended on us at 10:01am. It was brilliant that a new event was so popular and the day flew by.

I had planned on raffling the blankets made by our Ravelry group, as displayed here, however we were so busy talking about MSF and explaining how p/hop worked that we didn’t have time to sell any tickets. We’ll come up with another way to use them as they are lovely so keep an eye here for news.

We met lots of familiar faces and plenty of new ones. Despite being busy we found time to have a look at the other stands and it was great spotting people who had picked up one of our patterns choosing yarn to make their new project. I really enjoyed the range of stands at the show and there were lots of demonstrations to see too, such as sheep shearing, a giant spinning wheel and plenty of animals. On the Sunday Wrigglefingers ran a couple of workshops on fleece preparation, fibre blending and a ball winding service and asked participants for a donation to p/hop for her time which provided a generous addition to our fundraising. Thank you Wrigglefingers!

There were ducks and chickens wandering around behind our marquee who I enjoyed chatting to when I popped out for some fresh air. I can now say Médecins Sans Frontières in hen. The weather was glorious and there was a friendly & relaxed atmosphere with fibre fans enjoying sitting on the grass having a natter. There are many more photos of Fibre East on Flickr.

I’d like to say a HUGE THANK YOU to the organisers of Fibre East who did a brilliant job, especially as it was their first ever show which was very well organised with a lovely friendly atmosphere, and also a massive thank you to Jane, Sarah and Ros for all their help and hard work (and to Sarah for putting me up on Saturday night, feeding me delicious curry, being my taxi service and providing the clothing rail for our samples) and finally an ENORMOUS thank you to everyone who stopped by our stand and made a donation.

We raised a marvellous £517.70 for MSF as well as lots of goodwill and awareness about the life saving work MSF do.

Since Fibre East I’ve received several new pattern donations so keep an eye here for new things to knit and change the world! Marvellous!

We had a fantastic weekend at KnitNation a few weekends ago. Thanks to dismal weather our stand in the KnitTea Salon was heaving, especially at lunchtimes and we met hundreds of lovely and generous knitters. Many of you already knew about p/hop which is great for us to hear but we also met people who support MSF’s work but didn’t know they had a knitting section and people who didn’t know about MSF or p/hop but whose faces lit up when we told them about our fundraiser.

Something else that made people smile was our new pattern. Knitters were bowled over by Ros Clarke’s Cricket Tea Cosy and it proved to be so popular that we ran out of patterns on Sunday. Luckily it is on our website so you can download it here. It was also great being able to offer something to crocheters and our Mobeius Cowl pattern was also popular with both experienced and novice hook wielders.

Whitehart aka Sadie volunteered with us on Saturday so we were able to snap her with our sample of her intriguing Tzenni sock pattern…

and we spotted Lyndsey aka Bagpuss in the middle of knitting a pair of Cranford mitts.

We also spotted people wearing our patterns (not Tea Cosies, not yet anyway…), especially the ever popular Trinity Shawl which we admired in a variety of yarns and styles of wear.

Here is Ewenique in her beautiful golden Trinity…

… Wonkyknitter in her’s which is made from her very own fabulous Shetland handspun yarn

and YellowPurpleZebra wearing her Trinity which was knit for her by partner and new knitter Lethaniol.

YellowPurpleZebra also helped us pack away the stand at the end of the show and as always we couldn’t have had our stand without many people’s help. Here comes the Oscar part, with a teapot in a cricket jumper instead of a little gold man.

A big THANK YOU to Alice, CookieA for donating the display space and kit as well as for organising a wonderful event for fibre fans and to the KnitNation Crew for all their hardwork, friendliness and professionalism making the event run smoothly. Another BIG THANK YOU to all our volunteers who gave up their shopping time in the marvellous and tempting market place to talk to knitters about p/hop and guide people to the patterns that suit them. They are lapurplepenguin (who used her work volunteering time to help me get everything ready on Friday and lug all the patterns over to South Kensington as well as help on the Saturday), DianneB, Whitehart,jabberknit,  jackier, LornaB, Alpacaaddict and to Lzi who gave me and the p/hop display a lift home which was a massive help and saved MSF money and me a taxi kerfuffle. You are all mervellous and we couldn’t have done it without you.

Phew. After all that how did we do? Fanfare please……..

We raised a whopping £984.80 for MSF so here is my final THANK YOU to everyone who came and chatted to us and made a donation. All your kindness has been turned into tangible things like measles vaccinations, nutrition kits, malaria treatments and the like. Pretty good going for people who dabble with sticks and string. Knitters, we are awesome.

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’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…

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.

…you will see our new video made by Ghadas who is a nurse working for MSF in Nigeria who is also a fan of the fibre arts.

Once you’ve watched Hadas’s video scroll down and check our current out UK total. Not bad eh? I was hoping we’d reach our £23,000 target in time for the Just Giving Awards but didn’t expect it to happen so quickly. I suspect this has something to do with a knitterly meet up in York last weekend (more on that coming soon!).

I took a moment to gaze at the percentage total at 101%, but like MSF we don’t sit still for long (unless knitting or crocheting of course) so I’ve upped the target to £25,000.

When you watch Hadas’s video you may notice a slight irregularity, though looking the the granny squares in the video brings me on to what’s happening in our Ravelry group. Every year the group comes together making blankets for the festivals we attend. Currently there are four, yes four, on the go covering 3 weights of yarn and two crafts. If you like knitting or crocheting please feel free to join in. The main blanket thread is here which has links to the four projects at the top of the page.

I wonder how much p/hop will have raised by the end of 2011, sending more brilliant and committed people like Hadas into the field. Nice work knitters and crocheters.

We had a hoot at The Bothered Owl Christmas Party last week. There was tea, wine, mince pies, plenty of nibbles, good food and great company. It was a great evening for socialising and knitting in a lovely relaxed atmosphere. Onehandknits has written a good review of the evening here though I feel I should yarn you, it contains a lot of lovely yarn.

Sadie aka Whitehart and Sarah aka SarahAbroad volunteered at our table where we had our favourite gift knitting patterns available for donation. Sadie had brought along a pair of Cranford Mitts (I think the 8th pair of the nine pairs she has made!) which we borrowed as a sample. The Cranford Mitt-a-long was so popular we extended it to the end of December so please join in the fun over on Ravelry.

Sadie and her Cranford Mitts

We’re also having a knit-a-long for our Christmas Stocking pattern. I made one of these as I wasn’t sure if our sample would arrive in time for Christmas but it only took me a weekend to knit it. A big thank you to Crochet-y-knitter for her beautiful sample. If you’re a little nervous about stranded knitting take a look at this great tutorial (scroll down) to get inspired.

We raised £46.56 at the Bothered Owl party which is pretty good for an evening of scoffing delicious mince pies, vegan sausage rolls and eyeing up gorgeous yarn. A big thank you to everyone who made a donation and to Sarah and Sadie for giving up their free time to help out and a huge thank you to the Bothered Owls for inviting us to such a fun event.

Seasons Greeting to you all, I hope you have a peaceful and happy festive holiday.