We can’t believe that December is already upon us. To celebrate the season and get in the festive spirit we have a fabulous new pattern for you. Introducing Rudolph, that Reindeer! Designer Judith Baser says:

I first came across p/hop through Ravelry and thought it a brilliant scheme – anything that involves knitting will grab my attention, and the idea of raising money for such an excellent cause and being involved in knitting as well is great. I’ve knitted some of the samples so kindly donated by generous designers, and have been lucky enough to be able to help out on the stall at several events, spreading the word! Rudolph is my first attempt at producing a pattern. He was inspired by some birds I saw at a craft fair made out of bean bags, and I thought the basic design could be knitted into a cute little animal shape. I do hope people will enjoy producing a few of their own Rudolphs, and will take a few minutes to visit the p/hop site and make a small donation to help MSF continue with their work.

To download your copy of the pattern please click here

We are delighted to add the Riviera Scarf to our online pattern collection. Visitors to the Glasgow School of Yarn will have seen it already.

Designer Rachel Atkinson says:

‘Perfect for adventurous beginners and intermediate knitters looking to build on their skills, or simply for those of you after a speedy gift project, the Riviera Scarf came from a designer challenge to create a design from 100g of chunky yarn. The main pattern is worked in garter stitch and uses increases and decreases to create the shaping and lace edge. There are a couple of other techniques in there as well which may be new to you and are useful to have in your knitting portfolio!

Having been involved with p/hop from the very early days it is a pleasure to donate this pattern in the hope that it will help to promote this incredible charity and the work of the MSF team to new knitters and to show support for all the work they are doing.’

Thanks very much Rachel! You can find more about Rachel’s delightful design and download the pattern here.

You can read more from Rachel on her blog mylifeinknitwear

If I were to pick my favourite thing to knit, I think cabled socks might win. The unusual cables on Oscillating Socks wouldn’t rest until I made them into a design and the side cables couldn’t be stopped even by the toe, continuing round in a manner similar to seamless, saddle shoulders. I call them oscillating because the cables take turns to be in front.

They are made top down with a flap and gusset heel. Two sizes are available and the purl columns makes them quite stretchy.

I first became aware of phop through The Yarn Yard and I thought it was a great way to raise money for a very worthy cause as well as doing something you enjoy. I wanted to donate this pattern as a tribute to the gorgeous yarns that she makes and the good work that MSF is doing.

The pattern page is not up yet as we are getting ready to cast on for the Ravellenic Games but you can download the PDF by clicking here.

Don’t forget the donate buttons to your right to help MSF’s fantastic work. Thank you.

Blue skies, green grass, extremely fit men running around, and the agony of Andy Murray losing again. A bowl of strawberries and cream, and perhaps a glass of barley water or Pimms would be the ideal accompaniment to the perfect summer afternoon of knitting while watching the tennis.

What better project for the tennis season than these little footlets, inspired by classic tennis socks with the little pompoms on the back?  The footlets have a neat i-cord bind off with a button fastening to ensure that they fit well over the heel. The pompoms are optional but recommended!

They are a great way of using up small balls of leftover sock yarn. The stripe pattern shows off a beautiful variegated or self-striping yarn if you choose a neutral solid as the background. For the full Wimbledon effect, you’ll want purple and green yarn, but this would also be a good choice of pattern for the Ravelympics, knitted in the colours of your home nation.

As I write this, MSF are working with refugees in Southern Sudan who are dying because there is no fresh water to drink. As the traditional English summer rain pours down outside, it’s hard to imagine that this horrific crisis is going on unremarked. I hope you have fun knitting these socks, and please give generously to p/hop for the pattern, to support MSF’s work in Sudan and elsewhere.

A few months ago I was at the Knitting show at Olympia, admiring the talent of Muir and Osborne, who you may be familar with for their brilliant Best in Show books.

I mentioned that I run p/hop, as I always do to anyone who has an air of a knitter about them, and they said “oh, we have a pattern. It’s currently on our website as a freebie but if you can use it to raise money for MSF that would be a much better home for it.”

Now I hear this quite often, and these things don’t always work out, so I gave them my email address and if something came of it, well great, and if not, it wouldn’t really matter.

Now, not only did Muir and Osborne come through, they shone.

I give you p/hop’s first sweater pattern, and its not any old sweater pattern.

Oh no dear reader, this is a sweater with Royal connections.

There is a copy of this sweater in the V&A. Even David Bowie once had one of these jumpers.

The Eighties are back, and they are back with p/hop!

I give you the Sheep Sweater!

At present the pattern is in jpeg format which you can copy and paste into word or print straight from your PC. We are working on an updated version which we are hoping to have on the website as a PDF in June.

So, if you fancy emulating a style icon of a generation, using your intarsia skills and knitting up those fab sheep here is the pattern.

There’s even a reworked version which has been spotted on the streets of hipster Hoxton in That London. Marvellous.

I love knitting socks. They’re small and portable, easy to tuck in my handbag ready to work on while I’m on the bus, or waiting for an appointment, or even standing in a queue. I always have a pair on the go. Unfortunately, I don’t actually wear socks that much; I mainly wear skirts with tights or bare legs, and my handknitted socks end up only being worn on weekends or in the evenings. Luckily, my husband loves handknitted socks and will take all the pairs I can knit him, so I’m free to indulge my obsession to my heart’s content.

There aren’t that many patterns for men’s socks around, though. Or at least not patterns that meet my criterion of being interesting enough to knit that I don’t die of boredom in the process (bearing in mind that my husband has wide UK size 10.5 feet, so his socks involve a lot of knitting) and my husband’s criterion of not being too fancy. So I decided I’d design him some, and because he’s a big rugby fan I came up with the idea of using a rugby goalpost motif.

I designed the socks toe-up, because when knitting socks for big feet I think it’s always a good idea to do the feet first and know how much you have left for the legs. They’ve got a heel flap and gusset, rather than short-row heels, to accommodate higher arches. I knitted them in rugby-pitch-coloured yarn, but you could easily make them in team colours instead!

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!