Once again I had a fabulous time at Fibre East meeting and chatting with lots of lovely supporters.  Thank you so much to Janet Ellison and her army of fabulous volunteers for another great show.  We raised a wonderful £376.75.

The stall which raised £376.75 in donations

It was hot again this year, but that didn’t deter the fibre fanciers from coming for a great day out.  There was lots to do besides shop for yarn, patterns, needles and notions, spinning wheels, drop spindles, fleece (washed/unwashed/dyed/undyed/carded/uncarded… – very complicated world is spinning…).  Once again there was a great demonstration of sheep shearing on the field and you could buy the fleece after meeting the sheep!!  I was lucky enough to watch the demonstration whilst sitting under a tree eating my lunch – thanks for Judith (aka Jabberknit) and Tina (aka WickedWoolyWitch) for standing in for me.

sheep – waiting patiently in the heat to be shaun!

The site of the show is at Redbourne Community College and they have a small farm, which was open!  I loved my wander around the farm on Sunday when Jacqui (aka Tiggerbee ) and Heather (aka nearlythere )were manning the stall.  I love volunteers!!

Some less than usual “guests” at Fibre East

Fibre East 2013 was the first stand I ran as P/Hop Coordinator and, as some of you may know by now, Fibre East 2014 was also my last!  How sad, but also quite nice.  I have thoroughly loved being the P/hop person over the last year and a bit and am sad to be moving on, but my lifestyle has changed an I no longer have enough time to do the role justice.  If you can spare a day a week, love social media and all things knitty, then perhaps you could apply.  All details here.

I have yet to get feedback following the delights of Unwind Brighton – will keep you posted on funds raised as soon as I know!

I do know, however, that we had a celebrity visitor to our stall.  Lynda from The Great British Sewing Bee, with her daughter, Sarah from Crafts from the Cwtch.

Great British Sewing Bee’s Lynda, wearing a P/Hop sample

Lynda being styled by her daughter, Sarah

Our wonderful volunteer Heather (aka Nearlythere on her blog and Ravelry) took these pictures.

Heather also wrote a lovely little blog about being a P/Hop volunteer at a show.  You can read that here: P/Hop: putting the fun in fundraising at Unwind Brighton

Wonderful Heather loved volunteering so much that she did it again at Fibre East – THANKS so much Heather!!

Lighting the Knit Signal!

There are lots of brilliant ways that you can help P/Hop to raise funds for MSF.  P/Hop was set up as a community project, so that lots of people could get involved.  I donate one day a week plus additional work when we have shows to do, but there is so much more we could do with your help.

Besides downloading our patterns for a donation, or giving us a donation at a yarn show, there are several other ways that you can help raise funds for, and awareness of, MSF:

Get in touch / spread the word / Social Knitworking

We are always open to new ideas and fund-raising suggestions.  If you have a brilliant idea we would love to hear it.  Either start a thread in our Ravelry group,  email us, tweet us @msf_phop or post it on our Facebook page.  If you do have a great idea, we’d like you to help run it – there’s only me volunteering for one day a week so we’d like all the help we can get.

We’d also love you to share amusing or interesting knit/crochet/yarn – funny cats etc so please do.

 Ask your LYS to stock some P/Hop patterns

The lovely George and Louise from YarnGarden have a selection of our patterns available for donations – we think this is a great idea.  So, if you own a yarn store or rung stalls at various shows (or are friendly with someone who does), perhaps you could download a selction of our our patterns, direct from our website, and make them available in-store for a donation to MSF.  You could also use our patterns to showcase your beautiful yarns.  We’d be happy to send you some MSF literature and a collection box.  Please email us if you would like more information.

George and Louise from YarnGarden handing over their pattern donations

Volunteer to help run a stall for an hour or two

P/Hop currently have stalls booked at the following events and would love some helpers:

Woolfest in Cockermouth, Cumbria Friday 27 & Saturday 28 June

Unwind Brighton Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 July

Firbre East  near Bedford Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 July

I will be going to both Woolfest and Fibre East and would love some of you to help for a while – to get to meet you and so I can take the odd loo break!

Sadly I cannot make it to Brighton.  We have a few volunteers already, but I need to make sure that we have enough to cover the whole event.  The wonderful Hilltop Katie from Hilltop Cloud has offered to take our stall things to and from the show, but we’d like a couple of volunteers to set up the stall (it’s really quite easy and I’ll give you full instructions) and to take it down and pack it away.  Please email me if you think you can help.  Kate Ellis, p/hop Coordinator – p-hop@london.msf.org

Me (Kate) standing proudly in front of my first P/Hop stall

Run a P/Hop stall at your local yarn show

Whilst we’d love to attend all the wonderful fibre events around the country, we simply don’t have the resources.  However if you would like to run a stall at a yarn fair for P/Hop we would love it.  We’ll be able to guide you and send literature on MSF, collection buckets and stickers and some sample knits etc.  Please email us if you are interested.

Hold a P/Hop Yarn Swap or other event

Get a few like minded people together in your area and hold a yarn swap – well any kind of swap really.  If each person takes some yarn or craft books which they no longer want they can swap them for something that someone else has bought.  You can ask everyone to make a donation to be able to take part.   Check out the yarn swaps that have already raised loads of money and awareness for MSF.

If you are holding a knitting, crochet or other fibre related event for MSF please let us know, we would love you to write a blog post about your event, both publicizing it and writing a review of it for this blog.  We can help share your event on Twitter and Facebook.

Design and donate a pattern

We wouldn’t get far with our fundraising if we didn’t have lovely designers donating their patterns to us.  We are always looking for new patterns, so whether you’re an experienced designer or just starting out, please get in touch if you’d like to give us your pattern.

Our submission guidelines are here.

Whip up a sample

We find that patterns are more popular at shows if there’s a sample or two of the fnished article on display.  We are currently looking for samples of the following patterns, but any samples are always greatfully recieved!

Hat
High Line

Mitts
Jacqueline

Scarf
The Diamond Dot Scarf

Crochet
Retro Baby Buggy Blanket
October Leaves

This is a community project, the more knitters and crocheters put in, the more MSF and the people they help get out.

Thank you.

We were delighted when the  fabulous Kate Heppel from Knit Now magazine rang to offer us a whole page in this excellent magazine.  Publicity is very much appreciated by MSF & P/hop.  The more people who know of P/Hop and our patterns, the more money and awareness we can raise for MSF and the more people we can help.

We are featured in issue 33 on page 77. 

I think the advert looks fantastic.  It’s great at creating awareness of MSF (Medecine sans Frontieres/Doctors withour borders) and shows off a couple of our lovely patterns.

The two patterns featured are The Diamond Dot Scarf by Kate Ellis (Katestiwrl) and the Rerto Baby… Buggy Blanket by Helen Westerman (thredHED).  You can down load them by clicking on the links below:

The Diamond Dot Scarf

Retro Baby… Buggy Blanket

Please don’t forget to make a donation.

THANK YOU KNIT NOW.

Well is doesn’t seem very long since I blogged about hitting our last target and here we are again with a whopping

£45,000!

It truly is amazing how wonderful and generous our knitty and crochety supporters are.  I am thrilled to be coordinating such a wonderful fundraising effort and you wonderful people have made me very popular in the MSF London office – they keep feeding me cake! I like cake! It’s such a shame that I cannot share it with you all!

On a more serious note, I thought you might like an idea of what P/Hopping can provide to assist MSF’s valuable work in the field – this is what our £45,000 can buy:

Your fundraising while knitting and nattering can supply 12 cholera treatment centres, vital in managing the treatment of severely sick cholera patients.

  …   becomes…

Photograper: Rocío González Bernal
Title: Cholera in Kamanyola, Bukavu, DRC

Your donations for patterns can buy two and a half Médecins Sans Frontières jeeps, equipped to deliver medical aid to the remotest of areas.

… becomes…

Photographer: Jason Van Dyke

Caption:  The exhausted team back in Lankien after the ten hour return walk.

Your yarn swapping events can send a surgeon to the front line of armed conflicts or disasters for 122 weeks (that’s more than 2 years!).

…  becomes…

Photographer: Mathieu Fortoul

Title: Hôpital Communautaire de Bangui

Caption: Surgeon Bernard Leménager operating on a patient admitted for a gunshot wound.

Your stash diving for yarn to donate to swaps can provide antibiotics to treat 30,000 war wounded people.

… becomes…

Photographer: Laurence Hoenig

Caption:  Hassanya Yaya – 12. She was shot. The bullet touched her under the eye and killed the passenger who was sitting next to her in the bus. She doesn’t know where her parents are. Garoua-Boulaï Hospital in Cameroon.

Your donations at yarn shows can provide life-saving anti-malaria treatment to over 150,000 children.

… becomes…

Photographer: Corinne Baker

Caption:   MSF’s malaria outreach team testing and treating people for malaria in Apada village, outside Aweil town, Northern Bahr-el-Ghazal state.

Your crocheting of P/Hop patterns can help vaccinate 261,320 children against measles in susceptible areas.

… becomes…

Photographer: Florence Fermon

Caption:  An estimated 6,000 refugees who fled violence in CAR settled in Bitoye in southern Chad. MSF provides refugees in camp Bitoye primary health care and, in February 2014, conducted a vaccination campaign against measles, meningitis A and polio.

Thank you – please keep P/Hopping!

For more ways to get involved, look at our Get Involved page

Way back in November, Hazel Osmond contacted us to ask if we would mind if she used a P/Hop pattern to make and sell Rudolphs to raise funds for her daughter.    Hazel Osmond and her daughter Kate wanted to use Judith Baser’s gorgeous P/Hop pattern Rudolph, that Reindeer to raise funds by selling the little fellas at a Christmas fair.  We thought this was a lovely idea, but the designers of P/Hop patterns retain the copyright so we had to check first – Judith very kindly agreed – Thank You Judith – We love our designers!

Kate is going off to Honduras after her A Levels to teach, as a volunteer, in a primary school as part of Project Trust. She’ll be there for a year and she’s currently raising funds to make it happen.  As part of the fundraising, Hazel and Kate had a stall at a Christmas market selling all sorts of little things.  Pride of place in the centre of the stall were the Rudolphs expertly knitted by  Hazel, complete with a little sign which read:

“£1 from every reindeer goes to Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders). 

Theywere knitted from a pattern donated to them as

part of the P/Hop project – pennies per hours of pleasure. 

You can find more patterns to download at www.p-hop.co.uk”

Thank you so much Hazel and Kate for helping to raise money for MSF and promoting our website.  We wish Kate lots of luck and fun whilst volunteering on her gap year.

Wishing all our wonderful P/Hoppers a happy, healthy and fulfilling 2014!

My fist day back in the MSF office and there’s been loads to do.  Two invites to shows were in the inbox with all the form filling that that requires to apply for a place.  The first is Woolfest in Cockermouth, Cumbria on Friday 27 and Saturday 28 June, followed by Fibre-East in Redborne, Bedford on Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 July.  Both are lovely shows.  If any of you would like to volunteer to run the P/hop stall at either of these shows, I’d love to hear from you.  Either drop me a line at p-hop@london.msf.org or contact me through Ravelry – I’m Katestwirl!

We were also lucky enough to have the final bits of information needed for our latest pattern, which has been very kindly donated by Karie Westermann.  This gorgeous shawl is called Eyre Shawl and is now ready for download on the Eyre Shawl pattern page, where you can also read all about it.

It is perfect for keeping you cosy in this stormy weather while you’re sitting indoors reading the classics!  Think of poor Jane Eyre in that drafty school and pull it a little tighter!

Here is what Karie had to say about her inspiration for the shawl:

I first read Jane Eyre when I was fourteen. I had this mad, mad notion of ‘reading all the classics’ before I turned fifteen. I did not get far, of course, because I read indiscriminately and without any real understanding of what I read. Jane Eyre was one of the books I did read and I remember thinking it was ‘okay but a bit dull’.

Then I decided to revisit Jane Eyre last year and the novel took my breath away. What an intelligent, passionate, fierce book it is. It is both a Victorian literary equivalent of a Mills & Boon novel (“Reader, I married him”) and a proudly feminist book about the importance of knowing your own mind. The many knitting references were just cherries sprinkled on top! I swooned and cheered.

There was even a lovely bit where the housekeeper, Mrs Fairfax, says something in the vein of, “Oh, hang on a sec. Must. Finish. This. Row. before you dash off with the Master” – any knitter would smile in recognition. So, how could I resist designing a shawl to match Mrs Fairfax knitting away?

Please don’t forget to donate for patterns which you download.  Evey little bit helps MSF to help those in need wherever they may be.

On Friday night we went to Pom Pom Quarterly‘s Christmas party.  For those who do not know, Pom Pom is an uber stylish quartlery magazine stuffed with knitting & crochet patterns, as well as recipes and and other arty/crafty goings on.  The party was a great event with everything us knitty people need to have a great night: food & drink, yarn, music and fabulously friendly creative and crafty people.

The P/Hop stall

Now there is always lots of lovely yarn at knitty events, as well as wonderful people, but this event offered us so much more – a party too!!

To feed our foodie desires, there was FREE cheese & biscuits, with gorgeous onion chutney and even bags of freshly popped popcorn.  The bar was well stocked with wonderfuly smelling mulled wine, beer, cranberry juice and a very festive gin and tonic.

There was live music too, from local musicians;  Bard, Good Girl & The Bad Times and Whiskey Moon Face.  The  played a lovely mix of quite mellow of music, which was loud enough to boogie to in the party area but not too loud that we couldn’t hear ourselves think in the pop up market area (where our little stall was).

The party place

(with Lydia and Meghan on stage doing the prize draw)

This gave the whole event much more of a relaxed party vibe than a ‘dash around and grab that skein before someone else does’ vibe that you can get at some festivals.  Having said that, there was lots of delicious yarn to be grabbing at, with stalls from Kettle Yarn Co, Lioness Arts, Skein Queen, Art Equals Happy, and last, but by no means least,  The Uncommon Thread. Oh and us, of course, with our fabulous patterns offered for donations to MSF.  You could also see a selection of the patterns from Pom Pom all knitted up so you could feel them and try them.  They looked so wonderful in the flesh (fleece?)!

The market place

We raised a rather incredible £82.91 in donations – we were only there for 4 hours! yipeee!  Thank you to everyone who donated – I know it’s a bit of a cliche, but MSF really couldn’t do it without you.  I hope you love your patterns!

I (aka Katestwirl) manned the stall for most of the night, with the wonderful Judith (aka Jude00) taking over for around an hour, so I could sample the other delights of the evening – Thank you so much, Judith!  I would also like to thank Dani (aka Lionessknits) from Lioness Arts who offered her services, even though she had never met me before, and helped me to set up our stall – pinning sock samples to the table cloth and around our MSF flag.

Finally I would like to say a huge THANK YOU to Meghan (aka meghanaf) and Lydia (aka LydiaShmidia) for inviting P/Hop to their party and for giving us a great space right next to the bar (ahem…  I think they may know me a little too well)!

We did a shout out for teeny tiny hats, way back in March 2012 and thought you’d appreciated an update.  Judith, one of our midwives in Pakistan has sent us a few pictures of the baby hats which she recently took with her to Quetta.  Here’s what she had to say:

Dear Everyone especially those in the MSF. UK office
 
Some photos to show you the hats in use and how very appreciative we are of them.
The weather here in Quetta has changed dramatically freezing cold and dry. We here cannot thank the ladies of the Pennies per hour of pleasure enough for their dedication in passing these hats to MSF for use within the projects
When I counted the hats on arrival here at Quetta there were three hundred and fifty hats  and we have divided them so both projects benefit from them. The project at the Quetta children Hospital which is MSF-OCA based and the Kuchlak project.
Just to add we have now combined these two projects as one.
As much as we need medical care, drugs and people to manage within the field it is the little things like the hats that go a long way in assisting with the care
Many many thanks from all those at the Kuchlak-Quetta project
Judith Nicholas
Expat midwife
Kuchlak-midwife-msf-oca

We can not accept anymore hats for the time being (we just don’t have the space) but if you’d love to knit for others, check out the UK Hand Knitting Association’s website – there’s a great long list of charity knitting projects for you to get your needles clicking for!  Knitting for Charity

We have 2 new patterns for you, both with a Royal vibe!  The Diana Black Sheep Sweater and the Diamond Dot Scarf.

Firstly, and at last the Diana Black Sheep Sweater pattern from Muir and Osborne is finally available as a download from P/Hop.

Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne very kindly donated their pattern a long long time ago but we didn’t have the time to assemble it into a “proper” format for download.  The wonderful Bronagh (lapurplepenguin) helped enormously by popping the details in to a Word document and then, finally, thanks to the generosity of Clare from Yarn and Pointy Sticks who has donated her tech-editing skills, we now have a downloadable pattern.  It wasn’t easy – knitting pattern language has changed over the years… and the yarn it was designed for is no longer available!

If you fancy getting your 80s’ vibe on, then this gorgeous sheepy number is perfect for you!  Those little sheep are just soooo cute!

If knitting up whole garments is not your thing, Kate Ellis (Kate’s Twirl) has donated her Diamond Dot Scarf pattern to us too.  The pattern was designed as an homage to Her Majesty The Queen for her Diamond Jubilee year and was previously available as a Ravelry Download.  You can now download it here for a donation to MSF.

So, pour yourself a cup of Earl Grey and sit back and relax with a spot of regal knitting.

Happy knitting!