WHEN : June 1st 2013
WHERE : Stone Station, Stone, Staffordshire. ST15 8ER
TIME : 10.30 – 15.30
COST: £3 & £1 child

Come along and sit and knit, sew, crochet, spin…..whatever is your joy. Share your projects and skills. Pass out your business cards if you are a maker.

There will be a Chinese Auction, (see Wikipedia for how this works) so bring along all your unwanted craft items and supplies. Proceeds will go to Medecins Sans Frontieres via p/hop. You will be able to learn more of p/hop and see their most popular patterns on the day.

And most importantly there will be tea, coffee, cake and cookies

Stone Station Community Centre is a wonderful place, on one level, full of lovely light and so interesting. You can catch a train from Stafford literally to the front door and parking is great.
Children are very welcome to come along and craft.

Look forward to seeing you

Jeanette x

Can you donate eight hours a week of your time?

Then p/hop needs you!

What does this role involve?

1) Running this blog, tweeting social media awesomeness, sharing the latest news with p/hop fans worldwide and raising awareness about MSF’s awesome life-saving work!

Have any more questions?

Jane, one of p/hop’s founders and coordinator, gave a great interview about p/hop with Knit Now magazine last month. You can read it online here. Thanks to the lovely people at Knit Now magazine for sharing p/hop with your readers.

Emily Wise is a British doctor working with MSF in Karakalpakstan in Uzbekistan for nine months treating multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. The disease itself is bad enough however the treatment is also pretty awful, taking at least nine months, with the drudgery of taking 20 tablets a day and potential side effects such as nausea,  complete, permanent hearing loss, and psychosis.

Emily is blogging about her work, with a nice mix of serious stories about the people MSF are helping and the lighter side of life overseas. In her most recent post she writes about what her and the team get up to in their time off and mentioned this scarf her mum made for her, complete with MSF logo. Fab, eh?

Hand knitted MSF scarf © Emily Wise

MSF are pushing for change for the treatment of tuberculosis. In 2011, MSF treated 30,700 people for tuberculosis and 1,060 for multidrug-resistant TB. Find out more…

New Year, New Stash!

What you need is a p/hop swap to reinvigorate your stash for the new year! Traditionally, p/hop swaps have been held at local knitting groups or events. People bring yarn they’re no longer in love with to swap, it all goes on a big table, and then everyone chooses something from the big pile to take home. And of course, they make a p/hop donation for the fun of it and the shiny new-to-them yarn.

Not all of us can get to these swaps, so this January we’re hosting a postal p/hop swap. If you sign up, you’ll need to send around 200g of unused yarn from your stash to your partner. In return, you’ll get the same amount of brand new yarn to play with. It could be a yarn base you’ve never tried, a colour you’d never thought of, or a combination of yarns that work with something else you already own. Whatever you get, it will put a new splash in your stash, for the cost of postage and a p/hop donation with all the money donated going straight to MSF’s fantastic work.

Sound fun? The details of the swap and sign ups are in our friendly ravelry group here. If you have any questions about how the swap works, that’s also the place to ask them. Come and join us for a stash swapping start to 2013!

Tweeting about this? #NYNS #phop

Jane Lithgow took the p/hop reins in July and while she’s having a well-deserved festive holiday I thought I’d pop back to reflect on 2012.

While I’ve had less time for p/hop I still appreciate all the free time or the hard-earned cash people give up to help people less fortunate have access to healthcare.

So, what’s happened this year?

January

December 2011 had been pretty busy with p/hop’s birthday competition so we had a fairly quiet month organising behind the scenes for upcoming yarn shows and preparing new patterns.

We did have a beautiful new pattern, Ermintrude Mitts donated by Helena Cullum, which I like so much I made a pair for my MIL this Christmas.

February

February

We reached our £32,012 target (see what we did there?) and upped the target to a whopping £40,ooo as MSF had just turned 40, we had 40 patterns and um, other 40 related reasons.

The versatile and intriguing  Minerva Cowl pattern, knitted in a moebius loop, was donated by Anna Richardson.

March

March

We had an unusual request for knitted items, premature baby hats for our maternity clinics. Within days of asking for them tiny hats arrived at the MSF office. MSF also released a report on Mother’s Day about reducing maternal mortality. It is incredible the difference a small amount of money can make to keeping women safe in pregnancy and childbirth.

The generous people behind Sheepfold donated their Felted Crochet Bowl pattern, a great beginners project if you’ve just taken up the hook or a quick and easy way to use up leftover yarn if you’re a more experienced crocheter.

Natalie, p-hop founder, and I went to the Just Giving Awards, this time as judges, where we rubbed shoulders with the likes of Joanna Lumley and Jane appeared on the big screen!

April

April

The cable-tastic Jacqueline Mitts pattern, designed and donated by Bronagh Miskelly aka La Purple Penguin, was published.

May

May

A piece of knitting history was donated to p/hop. The Sheep Sweater, designed by Muir and Osborne, worn by Princess Diana and other 80’s icons, arrived at p/hop!

We also launched the rugby themed Try Again Sock pattern donated by Sadie Slater. Scrummy! (groan)

Pete, who helped get p/hop up and running left MSF and tried on a tiny hat.

June

June

In June we went to Wimbledon, with Ros Clarke’s Wimbledon socks, perfect for the summer tennis season.

We were inundated with  over 500 tiny hats which have gone to MSF maternity clinics overseas.

The lovely Stitch London organised a World Wide Knit in Public day picnic on the South Bank in London which included a raffle for MSF which raised a whopping £301.

Stitch London WWKIP picnic

July

July

Long term p/hop supporter, designer of Cranford Mitts, Karenina Socks and Spiral Socks, talented Jane Lithgow took on p/hop.

A huge refugee crisis was hitting South Sudan but wasn’t getting much media coverage. Knitters, however, are beyond just responding to mainstream news and on hearing water shortages were affecting people in refugee camps, knitter (and designer) Ros Clarke came up with the brilliant idea of p/H2O. Pennies per sip of water.

Family in flooded refugee camp, South Sudan © Ruby Siddique/MSF

Back in the UK we took p/hop on the road to Woolfest and Fibre East festivals, both of which were soggy (by soggy I mean landslides, floods, and mud, lots of mud) but loads of fun. As always our patterns were a hit and generous fibre fans donated over £1,200 over the two shows. We’re still finding mud in places it shouldn’t be! Nothing compared with living in a refugee camp though.

We also launched the beautifully twisted Oscillating socks pattern donated by Rachel Gibbs.

August

August

You may have noticed there was a rather large sporting event in the summer of 2012. The Ravellenic Games. From Sock Put to WIP wrestling to Shawl Sailing our team knitted their, ahem, socks off, including some knitters who were volunteering as Gamesmakers in that other event.
Even Teeny Tiny Teddy took a trip to the Olympic park.

September

September

We had a rest after the Olympics.

October

October

Jane took p/hop on the road again, this time to the thankfully dry and mud-free Glasgow School of Yarn. The event is held in the beautiful Rennie Mackintosh church where super knitters – including artisan dyers who came up with the excellent  idea of lucky dip bags for p/hop – raised a fantastic £770.

November

November

Rachel Atkinson aka Knittingtastic donated her clever, quick to knit and delightful to wear Riviera Scarf pattern to p/hop. I’ve seen several of these being sported in Nice where I am currently moored with my yacht around that London. Tres de rigeur, n’est pas?

December

December

The fabulous people at The Yarn Cake in Glasgow held a yarn swap raising £394.63 for p/hop. Marvellous!

We rounded off the year with a festive pattern. Rudolph proved to be a hit, there are already 19 on Ravelry and I’m sure there are more out in the wild, maybe pulling a certain sleigh?

p/hop

p/hopping

Let’s not forget the ongoing yarn ‘hopping’ that happens on Ravelry. Do you have some unwanted stash? Just offer it up in our Ravelry group and another fibre-fan is likely to claim it in return for a donation to p/hop. Simples!

There’s also a yarn-swap being set up on Ravelry to reinvigorate your stash for the New Year.

So as you can see, loads of people made p/hop happen in 2012. A big thank you to all of you.

Sadly poverty wasn’t eradicated in 2012 so there is still a great need to fundraise for MSF’s life-saving work. As always if you have enjoyed our patterns or you are inspired by MSF’s work it is easy to make a donation using the links on the right.

2013

So what will 2013 bring?

Well, we’re only £2,500 away from reaching our £40,000 target and there are more patterns in the pipeline.

Thanks again and here’s to a happy 2013!

Please let us know what you enjoyed with p/hop in 2012, be it a pattern, meeting us at a show or something completely different, in the comments below.

The lovely people at the Yarn Cake in Glasgow have organised a festive yarns swap in aid of P/Hop. Details are as follows:

Date: Saturday 8th December 2012

Time: 6.00pm

Venue: The Yarn Cake,

148 Queen Margaret Drive, G20 8NY
Glasgow, Glasgow City
United Kingdom

They say:

join us on the night of the swap where as well as donations there will be wine, food and general hilarity.
p/hop is a fundraiser for medical aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), where you donate what you think patterns or in this case yarn is worth to you in pleasure. p/hop- pennies per hour of pleasure!

and here’s the link to the Ravelry page showing some of the yarn donated http://www.ravelry.com/discuss/the-yarn-cake/2356966

Sounds like a great evening -wish I was there!

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

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

Our table crammed with patterns and samples

 Our stall had a lovely position in the marketplace so we were really able to show off all the wonderful samples that our supporters have so generously made for us. Mind you, we have so many patterns now that it is quite difficult to fit them all on the table! 

Amazing display of P/hop shawls

We were pleased to be able to launch the Riviera Scarf  by Rachel Atkinson. Keep an eye on the website as we will be making it available to everyone very soon. 

There was a lovely atmosphere with plenty of space for knitters to come and decide on a P/Hop pattern, go and choose some yarn, have it wound for a P/Hop donation, settle down to knit then come over and see us if they needed help in getting started. Several people cast on Trinity shawls then and there and were helped to take their first steps in lace knitting. 

Now to the best  news of all -  thanks to the warm support we got from the organisers, vendors, volunteers and knitters we raised a quite magnificent £773.39, more than twice the amount raised last year. We would particularly like to thank: 

• Natalie of The Yarn Yard for putting me up for the weekend and ferrying all our equipment about. 
• Lilith of Old Maiden Aunt Yarns  for her very generous donation of a lucky dip of gorgeous sock and lace weight yarns which disappeared in a flash on Saturday! 
• Yvette from And Sew to Knit, Katie from Hilltop Cloud, Debbie from Ripples Crafts and Natalie from The Yarn Yard for their fabulous contributions for a lucky dip on Sunday which disappeared almost as fast. 
• Revelers at The Yarn Cake’s second birthday party on Friday night for their donations. 
• The volunteers who raised over £50 by winding skeins of yarn for knitters too impatient to wait to cast on! 
• Katherine who brought in a huge bag of knitting and crochet books for us to give  away for donations. 
• Joy, Hilary and Lucy who helped on the stall and gave me a chance to so a little bit of shopping. 
• Natalie’s mum for keeping us well supplied with coffee and drinks. 
• All the knitters who came and took patterns, chatted with us about MSF and made their donations. 
• And finally, Antje and her team at The Yarn Cake for putting on such a wonderful event and giving us so much support.

We really felt that the Glasgow School of Yarn had taken us to their hearts. We can’t wait for next year.