Following the storming £120 sale earlier this year of a vibrant hand knitted blanket, the marvellous Lyn (Christi1) has just donated another beautiful thing to P/hop for auction on Ebay, this time raising a fabulous £73.
A beautiful Handknit Valentine Shawl in cornflower blue with delicate lace pattern made from hand dyed Wild Fire Fibres Tempo 4 ply yarn – absolutely gorgeous.

Ebay seems to do well for us – we seem to be good at getting the message out and finding buyers who appreciate the joy of a hand crafted creation. If anyone else fancies having a go and wants help with listing etc, get in touch with me via Ravelry and I’ll try to help.

Well done to all concerned
Jo aka josp on ravelry.

Hello to everyone,

For those who don’t know me, I’m Lyn, and this is just a quick note to update you on a recent ebay auction to benefit MSF and p/hop.

Here’s the story: I knitted a large scrap yarn blanket (the multicoloured kind – think technicolour dream coat) which ended up being about 5 by 3 feet, made of merino/cashmere/nylon sock yarn in lots of little different coloured mini skeins. I used this free pattern from ravelry by Debbie Orr: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/zig-and-zag-sock-yarn-pram-baby-blanket. As I tend to knit because i enjoy the process, rather than because I particularly need the finished product, I decided that someone should have it who really liked it and wanted to use it. with this in mind, I contacted p/hop (you can take a look at this discussion if you like: (http://www.ravelry.com/discuss/p-hop/1515251/1-25) and through contributions from all the members, decided to offer it up for sale on ebay. A very helpful raveler, Jo (aka josp on ravelry) offered to coordinate the actual sale. within a few days, everything was organised, the auction was being publicised on ravelry, twitter, facebook and by word of mouth and all we had to do was sit back and nervously bite our nails in anticipation!

To begin with, the total rose ever so slooowly, but (watched by anxious eyes) it topped 30 pounds, then 50, then 80, and on the last nerve-wracking day, climbed over the 100 pound mark and finally sold, to a very generous person, for the grand total of 122 pounds!

I’d like to thank (ha! I sound like I’ve won the Oscars… but seriously I am really grateful to everyone!) p/hop for first of all taking me seriously, then coming up with all these useful suggestions (someone even said we should time the sale so that it ends on a Friday, apparently people are more generous on that day of the week – where do people come up with these things?!), everyone who read the discussion, contributed to it,organised the auction, publicised the event, bid on the blanket and finally the very lucky successful bidder who now has a beautiful (if I do say so myself!) blanket to enjoy.

This whole experience was a bit of an experiment because to my knowledge, p/hop hasn’t auctioned items off on ebay before, so it was a learning curve for all of us, not only me. but in my opinion, it’s had a fantastic outcome and will hopefully be the first of many successful fundraisers for MSF and p/hop!

Lyn x

My first ever blog post – be gentle with me!

P-hop sucks you in, its tentacles of humanitarian goodness creep out and grab you.

Happily lurking on Ravelry, I pipe up and the next thing I know I am Ebay – seller extraordinaire for the most gorgeous blanket.

Created by Christi1 (aka Lyn) to Debbie Orr’s pattern it has been generously donated for p-hop/MSF and we are auctioning it on Ebay! It is made from hand dyed mini skeins by Xenia Baxter at Art Of Xen, in 4ply 80% merino/ 10% cashmere/ 10% nylon superwash. The yarn alone cost £70 plus the hours of knitting that went into it make it a unique work of art to be treasured for generations.

So, tell your friends, colleagues and everyone with taste about this beauty. The auction ends on Friday 25th Feb at 8pm. Spread the word (Tweet about it, blog about it share the link on facebook or social network of choice, the more the merrier).

If this works for us, it could be the first of many.

That link again – http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170603811385#ht_922wt_932

Happy bidding

Jo