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!

Philippe Havet, a 53-year-old from Belgium, was an experienced emergency coordinator who had been working with MSF since 2000 in many countries, including Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Lebanon, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Somalia.

Andrias Karel Keiluhu, better known as ‘Kace’, was a 44-year-old medical doctor who had worked with MSF since 1998 in his native Indonesia as well as in Ethiopia, Thailand and Somalia.

There are further details on the MSF website.

Philippe Havet (right) and Andrias Karel Keiluhu, better known as ‘Kace’ (left). © MSF

My thoughts, sympathy and love go to their families and friends, those affected by the incident, as well as the people of Somalia.

One of the reasons I support MSF is their commitment to the people who need health care, even in the worst situations.

This tweet from @msf_field sums it up for me;

Even in times of personal grief and hurt, MSF are planning how to continue to help the people of Somalia.

This is why I p/hop.

Congratulations to Jen from East Lothian who answered correctly with “The fridge will be used to preserve vaccinations” and was chosen by random number generator.

Again, yes, a fridge, carried on foot over mountains, in a conflict zone, so vaccinations will reach those who need them. This is one of the reasons why I support MSF, the sheer determination to provide care to everyone who needs it.  If you missed this competition, Ferry’s blog post is still well worth a read!

It’s Fibre Thursday!

Today’s beautiful prize has been generously donated by Hilltop Cloud.

Here’s your chance to win fibre club membership for January 2012.

This means on those cold, miserable, post-Christmas, January days you will get a lovely surpise of 100g of soft squishy fibre, and a greeting card of the picture that inspired the fibre.

The winner will get their fibre in mid-January, the parcels will be sent by 16th January.

For your chance to win this gorgeous prize read this incredible blog post by MSF field coordinator Ferry, who tells his story of getting his logistics team over the Hauts Plateaux mountains, in a conflict zone in Democratic Republic Congo, on foot, with a fridge.

Yes, you did read that correctly, over mountains, with a fridge, on foot, in a conflict zone!

Tell us, what will the fridge be used for?

Email your answer to p-hop@london.msf.org with the subject “Climb every mountain” *by 2pm (GMT) on Friday 18th December.

Come back on Friday for our final competition in the 12 days of p/hop. We’ve got several gorgeous prizes up for grabs!

(*Yes, I am getting in the Christmas spirit and thinking about the Sound of Music.)

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Rules:

1) Competition ends at 2pm (GMT) on Friday 18th December 2011

2) Winners will be drawn from all comments left below by random number generator and notified by email. Prizes will be sent by post.
3) Competition open to everyone, including people outside UK.
4) No cash alternatives
5) One entry per person per competition.

Here’s Patricia’s introduction to her pattern:

These mitts represent an early foray into stranded colourwork for me. I have always found colourwork to be a bit intimidating (and I’m still not brave enough for steeks!) but this project showed me that I really didn’t need to be. Inspired by the wonderful architectural detail in Manchester Town Hall they are a simple but striking project for an advanced beginner. As the new academic year approaches these would be a lovely gift to make in school or college colours.

If you are daunted by colour work these are small enough to not be overwhelming and the straightforward pattern is easy to get the hang of. There’s a great video tutorial on the knittinghelp.com (scroll down for the colourwork video, there are videos for both continental and english styles of knitting).

You can find the pattern here, as always for a donation to MSF.

Stay tuned as we will have more fantastic new patterns here very soon…

You can read more about it on the MSF website, or see it on the news (when they are reporting on more than the immoral behaviour of a newspaper) but here is a summary.

• As prolonged drought grips Somalia, people are losing their livestock, homes and lives. Poor harvests, rising food prices, continuing violence and chronic poverty have further contributed to a sudden rise in malnutrition rates.

• Almost one in three children is suffering from severe malnutrition

• The security situation in Somalia is complicated, but because MSF is an impartial medical organisation and relies on charitable donations instead of government funding, it continues to be the only medical charity working in many areas.

• There are hundreds of children and adults arriving at MSF clinics every day. Many of them need expert medical care for malnutrition, often whilst battling other severe conditions such as malaria and pneumonia.

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The knit signal needs raising. The word needs spreading. We need to donate!

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Donating through our usual sites takes about a week to get to MSF. If you donate through the Somalia appeal it takes two days.

I know times are tough for a lot of us at the moment, however even the smallest donation will make a difference and enable MSF to continue their excellent and life-saving work.

And if you quite rightly found the picture of Asad at the top of the blog post distressing you can see how he is after treatment by MSF on the MSF website here.

Thank you for reading this.

The first episode was aired last night but is repeated at the following times:

Tues 25th May – 9pm
Sun 29th May -10pm
Mon 30th May -9pm

Part two is on Mon 30th May at 10pm

“Curious to see what kinds of people volunteer to work in some of the poorest and most dangerous places in the world, Current TV spent four months in the Democratic Republic of Congo following the lives and work of medical aid workers from Doctors Without Borders. ”

There’s a preview of it and more info here.

It’s good to see our fundraising money in action.

Image from Current TV

As you might have realised from the name of the socks I am a Harry Potter fan. What we knitters always look out for is the latest Christmas offerings from Molly Weasley’s
needles, both in description in the book, and visually on the films. It has always seemed that her knitting for the boys of the family, and often Harry, are a little hurried
and done because there was not a huge amount of money in the house hold.

After the battles and the wars, and the family had grown up and left home, I began to wonder what Molly and Arthur Weasley would do with their time. I knew that Arthur would be happy in his shed with his Muggle bits and pieces, but what about Molly, with time and stillness on her hands, what would she knit? She’d often knitted for her boys and Ginny too, but what could she knit that was a little bit special? What could she knit for the possible daughters in law? Socks seemed to be the perfect answer, and for all the daughters, what better than lace socks? Or perhaps during a lull in family life Molly treated herself to a pair of these?

Molly Weasley's Gift Socks

The lace pattern was based upon one in the Barbara Walker Treasury series of books, and charted to be knitted in the round. While it is a pretty lace pattern it is not complicated, and I and my test knitter found it a joy to see the pattern emerge. I have one other sock pattern donated to P/hop and always had this in mind when I wrote this pattern.

Close up of vine lace pattern

Everyone in life needs a little help, even in every day life, but when disaster strikes they need all the help we can give them. So I hope you enjoy the socks, and the pleasure of knitting them, and I know that the money raised is going to a wonderful and worthwhile cause, Doctors Without Borders, MSF.

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A big thank you to Susan for another great pattern (click here to go to the pattern page) which will help MSF weave their humanitarian magic around the world. If you like this pattern please take a look at Susan’s other p/hop pattern, the popular Ruth’s Harvest Socks.

What? Cholera treatment exhibition

When? Thursday 19th May, 5-9pm

Where? West Bank London, 133-137 Westbourne Grove, W11 2RS, LONDON

What is it?

MSF are taking a unique and interactive exhibition to Glastonbury festival this year. They are previewing it this Thursday and will feature installations including a cholera treatment centre as used in Haiti, live music, photo exhibitions and live graffiti. There is more information about this on the MSF UK website.

MSF teams treating cholera patients in Saint-Marc, Artibonite region, Haiti. 10 October 2010 Photo by Eliza Currando (Image from msf.org.uk)

It would be great if lots of p/hoppers could go as it will be a fun evening as well as a great opportunity to learn more about the work MSF does with your fundraising money and a chance to chat to some MSF staff.

To attend please email rsvp@london.msf.org

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What? Affinity Yarns Open Studio

When? Sunday 12th June, 2-6pm

Where? AffinityYarns, Whittlesford, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire

What is it?

Affinity Yarns are hosting an Open Studio event with proceeds going to to p/hop. You can chat to other knitters while enjoying tea, cake and yarn browsing. Ravelry members can get details here.

Image from Affinity Yarns Open Day in April

Please contact Affinity Yarns for further details.

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We will have a stand at the following knitting festivals:

What? Woolfest 2011

When? Friday 24 and Saturday 25 June

Where? Mitchell’s Lakeland Livestock Centre, Cockermouth, Cumbria

For more information please visit the Woolfest 2011 website.

What? KnitNation

When? 15th-17th July 2011

Where? Imperial College, South Kensington, London

For more information please visit the KnitNation2011 website.

What? Fibre East

When? Saturday 23rd & Sunday 24th July

Where? Scald End Farm, Mill Road, Thurleigh, Bedfordshire

For more information please visit the Fibre East website.

What? Fibre Flurry

When? Friday 28th & Saturday 29th October

Where? Kings Norton, Birmingham

For more information please visit the Fibre Flurry website.

As always there will be the opporunity to help out on the p/hop stand for half a day. Please keep an eye on our Ravelry group for requests for volunteers.

If you are holding an event for p/hop we would love to hear about it. If you would like to host an event, eg a yarn swap event or tea party for MSF, but are unsure on how to get started please get in touch, we are more than happy to help.

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

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