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

Last month P/Hop was once again invited to have a stall at the Glasgow School of Yarn, organised by The Yarn Cake yarn shop. The event is held in the beautiful surroundings of The Mackintosh Church, with two days of classes, stalls, cake and masses and masses of knitters – how could we refuse?

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.

Woolfest. Woolfest. Woolfest. I love Woolfest. It was the first knitting show I worked at with p/hop and I love the way you can see the whole process from sheep to sweater in one show. This year I roped (should that be woolled?) MSF’s web intern Nick into coming with me.

While Nick isn’t a knitter, I think the fumes from all the yarn on my desk have infiltrated his brain, plus he hadn’t seen the Lake District. We were planning to camp, however the weekend before Woolfest showed a low of 2C plus ALL THE RAIN was forecast. Luckily my lovely knitting friends came to the rescue with offers of floor space for sleeping on, saving us from hypothermia and saving MSF money.

So on Thursday evening we set off from sunny London in Nick’s car, laden down with our beautiful samples and a couple of thousand knitting patterns and headed north with a cheerful sense of optimism. If only we knew what lay ahead…

After an uneventful journey we arrived at around midnight to find Larissa casting off a Jacqueline Mitt for our display. After a good night’s sleep we headed to Woolfest bright and early to set up our display. We had a rather unusual stand, the milk stand. As we weren’t going to do any milking we had to disguise the milking stalls. The upside was there were lots of places to tie washing line too and drape sheets over, plus Nick is six-foot-a-lot tall, so after a few tweeks and occasional inspiration we converted the stand from this:

to this! Ta daaaaa!

The space worked really well as we could fit two tables into the space, which we needed as we’ve now got over 40 patterns.

Its always interesting to see which patterns ’sell’ at shows. The shawls and mittens are always popular, though the samples make a huge difference. BasilBogwoppit (love people’s Ravelry names) dropped off a beautiful pair of Ermintrude Mitts for us to borrow as a sample. As soon as they went on the stand the pattern flew off the table and we’d run out of copies in a couple of hours.

The teeny tiny teddy was also a big hit, which isn’t surprising as they are rather cute. Then there are the flurries of sock knitters who come to the stand, which I can relate to as I’m a rather avid sock knitter. To my shame I hadn’t brought any of my own hand-knit socks with me and I really could have used a pair as by the end of Friday the show was rather nippy. The storms that had been forecast had arrived and we could see sideways rain lashing across the car park, the continual river sound on the roof of the Livestock Centre and the wind howling through the aisles. Luckily fibre-folk are made of stern stuff and plenty of people came to the show. I was pleased we weren’t camping.

After a good first day Nick and I headed into Cockermouth, sampled some excellent Cumbrian beer as well as chatting with some interesting locals, had dinner and met up with other stall holders. We were staying with my friend Larissa in the cottage she had hired for the week, halfway between Kendal and Cockermouth in a lovely little village called Thornthwaite.

As we drove back along the A66 we discovered the first turn-off to Thornthwaite was closed due to the road now being a river. No problem we thought, we just carry along the A66 to the next turn-off. That easy drive became rather exciting/worriesome when the A66 became a lake. The rain was driving down hard and while I was tempted to open my passenger door to see how high the flood water was I was pretty sure that would let water into Nick’s car. After a seemingly endless slow slow crawl through deep water, our fingers crossed, with Nick’s car juddering forward, we came out of the flood. Luckily the second road into Thornthwaite was fine so we collapsed into Larissa’s cottage in a nervous heap. I was pleased we weren’t camping.

Needless to say we all slept well.

On Saturday morning we were ready to leave the cottage to head to Woolfest when we spotted a river, coursing down the side of the hill, that hadn’t been there the day before. On further inspection there had been a landslide just down the road (the only way out) and the road was now a river, complete with mud and tree debris. Nick was very MSF, put his wellies on and went out to help clear the landslide. It turned out the course of the new river was beneficial as it was stopping people’s homes from flooding, so the decision was made to leave the road blocked, with no plans to clear it until Sunday. WE WERE STUCK. We were also without a phone signal or internet. Imagine, four Londoners stuck without twitter! The horror, the horror!

Luckily text messages worked so I sent word to Jane and Natalie and hoped they would be able to set up the stand at Woolfest. I only had a pair of flip-flops and a pair of plimsoles (I’ve spent too long in London and lost my Northern common sense) so I was neither use nor ornament. While we were short of food (we had an egg, a tiny chunk of cheese and a portion of porridge between four of us) the neighbours were lovely and we weren’t going to starve, so I settled down to knit. I’d knit about one row when Nick came bounding in saying “the road’s been cleared”. Excellent news! We could even see the top of Skiddaw across the valley. We had an adventure-free drive to Woolfest, checked on Jane and Judith who had done a brilliant job of getting the stand up-and-running, and wolfed down a delicious Cumbrian breakfast in the Woolfest cafe.

The rest of Saturday went well, the weather was better than Friday and those of us who had been affected by the weather compared stories. I was pleased we hadn’t camped!

In the evening we stayed with the lovely Guild of Longdraw Spinners, introducing Nick to another realm of fibre-fanatic with talk of spinning styles and crimp. We walked into town, sampled a different type of Cumbrian ale, and taught Nick how to knit. Again, we had an encounter with an “interesting” local, who was fascinated by our knitting. He’d sampled rather a lot of Cumbrian ale and took to patting me on the head while I knitted. No really, he did. He also wanted a go. The thought of a lively young man wielding DPNs in a cosy pub was to much to bear so we managed to distract him and he went on his merry way. In the meantime Nick mastered the sticks.

The rest of our stay was relatively uneventful, aside from Nick trying the Cockermouth delicacy of curry with cheesy topping. On Sunday we drove back south via a visit to the pencil museum in Keswick which I’ve always wanted to visit (yes, I have another obsession) and got to see some Lakeland scenery.

Now for the important stuff: We raised a fantastic £906.44 at Woolfest! BIG THANK YOU to Woolfest for donating our stand, everyone who helped on our stand, Nick, Larissa, Heather and the Guild of Longdraw Spinners, and Jane and Judith for leaping into the breach when we were stuck behind a landslide. £906.44 will buy 3124 packets of Plumpy Nut, a is a nutritional supplement used to treat child malnutrition. That’s a lot of kids we’ve helped. Nice work fibre-folk!

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.

This weekend I’ve been busy unearthing our beautiful samples from their storages boxes, organising pattern printing and checking the weather forecast for p/hop’s annual outing to one of our favourite knitting shows, Woolfest!

p/hop has been a regular exhibitor at Woolfest since 2009 and so far you lovely fibre people have raised £2765.37 for MSF at Woolfest. Brilliant!

This year we will have several new patterns on our stand as well as your favourites. Another new part of our stand is MSF’s lovely website intern Nick, who is new to the knitting world, but he knows loads about MSF’s work helping people in need of healthcare. Please come and ask us questions about MSF’s incredible work as well as our fab knitting patterns.

As well as our patterns we’re hoping to raffle two gorgeous blankets which have been made with love and care by p/hoppers around the world. There’s the log cabin blanket (above) and barn-raising blanket (below). Ros, one of our talented designers who you can see in the photo above, is sadly not included as a raffle prize but she will be helping on our stand for part of the weekend.

Let us know in the comments below if you’re coming and we’ll keep an eye out for you.

See you in Cumbria!

Before Pete finished his job at MSF I put him to work on one last p/hop job; measuring the hundreds of small hats you’ve generously made and sent in so we can sort them by size.

Of course he couldn’t resist trying some of them on.

We’ve been really overwhelmed with your generosity, making hats for premature babies and malnourished kids who are treated at MSF’s clinic in Qetta, Pakistan.

One person made a whopping 19 hats (which I think is more hats than I have made since I started knitting) and many knitting groups have got involved too. Check out these lovely hats made by the fab knitting group, Cannock Crafties.

In total there are over 250, yes two-hundred-and-fifty hats waiting to be shipped to Pakistan. Marvellous!

I’m packing up the hats tomorrow to send to the clinic, though they will probably go in the post on Tuesday of next week (22nd May). If you’ve got any hats you  haven’t sent in yet be quick.

Some of you have asked if we are going to do this again. That depends on the clinic, they are going to see how quickly they use the hats and let us know if they will need any more.

So once again, a MASSIVE THANK YOU to all of you who have taken part.

Stay tuned to the blog as we’ve got many more patterns in the pipeline.

Over on Ravelry (where all the cool knitting stuff happens) there are two sock knitting challenges currently at the preparation stages.

They are Tour-de-sock and Sock-Sniper, both of which raise money for Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

While they’re not quite p/hop in that you donate a set amount to take part (US$7.50) they are strictly non-profit and last year raised over $1,500 for MSF.

So if you fancy some training for the Ravelympics sharpen your DPN’s and head over to Ravelry.

If it’s not your think you can always check out our marvellous sock patterns and/or  join our Ravelympics team.

Back in 2006 Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (better known as knit-blogger the Yarn Harlot) had an idea: the Knitting-Olympics.  During the 2006 Winter Olympics over 4000 knitters took on the spirit of the Olympic motto – Faster, Higher, Stronger – and challenged themselves to complete a project during the Winter Olympics.  The only rules were that the project couldn’t be started until the Olympic opening ceremony,  and had to be completed by the end of the Games.

Since 2006 the idea behind the Knitting Olympics has grown and evolved.  The knitting and crochet social network Ravelry has adopted it.  With the Olympic Games in London this summer, a group of volunteers are hard at work organising the 2012 Ravelympics.

What are the Ravelympics?

Just like the Yarn Harlot’s original idea, Ravelry members will challenge themselves and compete in various knitting and crochet events over the course of the 16 days of the Summer Olympics.  The only rules are that a project must be completed during the Olympics.  There are medals (well, blog badges) for anyone who finishes and it’s up to each individual competitor to decide just how far to challenge themselves. Never tried colourwork?  There’s an event for that.  Scared of cables or lace?  Now’s your chance to have a go.  Always wanted to make a pair of socks, but never got round to it?  Maybe this summer is the time to do it.

Up for a challenge?

Challenging ourselves as crafters can be fun and rewarding.  Up until this year I’d never made a whole garment in fair isle.  I wanted to, but I was a bit daunted and kept putting it off, even though I had the yarn and a beautiful pattern.  A friend and I decided we would make the same fair isle sweater at the same time (in different colours, otherwise it would be a bit weird) so that we could help each other out if we got stuck, and offer mutual support and encouragement.

So, for the time around the VI Nations (my favourite sporting competition, and a brilliant excuse for sitting in front of the telly all weekend for weeks on end during the winter and doing nothing but knitting) we knitted a fair isle sweater each.  Achieving something that you weren’t sure you could do is pretty awesome.

Join in the fun!

I’d love to share that buzz of achievement with my fellow crafters.  So, I’m captaining Team P/Hop for this year’s Ravelympics.   You don’t have to be a member of a team to compete, but it is much more fun and we will be supporting each other in our challenges and celebrating all those successes. You can read more about it here.

At the moment we are discussing what events we might each enter.  For me, I ‘d like to see if I can knit a whole lace shawl from start to finish in those 16 days.  Maybe something like Crocus Pocus.

Do join us – we’ll be having fun, challenging ourselves, and hopefully getting P/Hop closer to that £40,000 target.

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

We’ve had a great response to our request for handknitted/crocheted small hats for the MSF hospital in Qetta, Pakistan.

THANK YOU to everyone who has sent hat(s) in so far. To date, we’ve received over 100 and my desk is by far the most colourful one in the office.

Hat sizes

I don’t know exactly how many hats the clinic needs, all they mentioned was they wanted a range of sizes from 25cm head circumference up to child age five. One of our marvellous volunteers in our Ravelry group (thank you dodiegirl) put together a list of hat sizes and here is what we have so far:

Premature
25cm-25.5cm / 9 ¾” 10” - 70 hats
28cm-29cm / 11”-11 ½” - 9 hats
30-31cm / 11 ¾” -12” - 8 hats

Baby
0-3 months (33cm-34cm / 13”-13 ½”) - 4 hats
3-6 months (36cm / 14”) - none
6-12 months (38cm / 15”) - 2 hats

Toddler /Child#
12-24 months (40cm-45.5cm) /(16”-18”) - 1 hat
2-5yrs (45.5cm-53cm)/ (18/20”) - none

As you can see we’ve got lots of the smallest size which is great but not many of the other sizes.

If you’ve made the smallest size we can still use them, but if you are still waiting to cast on please consider making some of the larger sizes. They’ll help keep young children with malnutrition warm and give them a better chance of survival.

A few of you have made hats in rib, with a brim, which are great as they will probably get more wear as they are so stretchy.

Pakistan clinic

If you’re wondering where your hats will end up you can get a glimpse of the clinic is this video featuring Scottish MSF doctor Marianne Stephens. I was lucky to meet her last week and she’s ace. A whirlwind of energy and enthusiasm. Life in the clinic is pretty tough, if  videos aren’t for you can read an article about her here.

She was really excited about the hats. If you’ve just seen this and want to make some hats to send to the clinic in Qetta the details are here. I’m aiming to send the first batch out at the end of April.

Knitters and crocheters, you are awesome!

Thank you!