… my hair stylist, my local yarn shop, my bus driver…

As you may have noticed it’s the awards season with Baftas, Globes of Gold and a small man named Oscar filling our news headlines.

However it’s not just Hollywood that has awards. p/hop has been shortlisted for a Just Giving Award in the Most Creative Fundraiser category. This is very exciting. The judges are meeting today so we will soon know if we are in the final three which would mean a trip to the Emirates Stadium (meaning Pete would have to finally finish his scarf) for the awards ceremony. Even if we don’t make the final three it’s great to be shortlisted. You can read about us and the other deserving shortlisters here on the Just Giving website.

If you use twitter you can also help us with the Shorty Awards, twitter’s annual award ceremony. At the moment Justin Bieber and his many fans seem to be dominating the charity category but I’m sure knitters can take over and get us in the top 5. This isn’t because we want to win (well ok, we do a little) but if we get and stay in the top five it’s a great way to spread awareness about p/hop and about MSF. The Shorty website does seem a tad wonky so if your vote doesn’t show up please try again.

If you would like to vote for us please visit the Shorty Awards website, nominating @msf_phop in the #charity category.

It’s been lovely reading the reasons you have given for nominating p/hop. Here are a few of them:

@andallthatstash I nominate @msf_phop for a Shorty Award in #charity because it gives a close knit community an international goal

@JenACknitwear I nominate @msf_phop for a Shorty Award in #charity because... it’s such a simple, inclusive idea and an amazing cause.

@Gingoddess I nominate @msf_phop for a Shorty Award in #charity because it proves without doubt that small actions can do huge good

@alpacaaddict I nominate @msf_phop for a Shorty Award in #charity because…I can knit and save the world at the same time.

And one last one from Natalie who started p/hop…

@theyarnyard I nominate @msf_phop for a Shorty Award in #charity because… it’s like knitting love into every stitch.

You can also help us spread the word by letting your friends know about us and the shorty awards. Thank you to everyone who has voted so far.

The finalists in the Just Giving Awards are being announced on Thursday so we’ll let you know how we get on. We’re keeping our fingers crossed, except Pete who is still finishing his scarf…

Happy New Year Everyone. Before we launch headlong into 2011 I’m going to take a few moments to look back over 2010. What a year it was, we were here there and everywhere meeting hundreds, if not thousands of friendly and generous knitter, but you know all that (well you do if you read the blog). One of the things I love about p/hop is when people are inspired to make a difference and raise money which will enable MSF to provide vaccines, midwives, nutrition and other life saving care to people who desperately need it.

Take for example IsobelM who asked for a collecting tin and some info on p/hop and MSF to add to a display on knitting in her local library in the Isle of Man.  Or Shelia who always makes a donation through Just Giving whenever there is a birthday in the family, remembering those who have very little in life at times of personal celebration. Or Rhoda who knitted tea cosies to sell for MSF at a local craft cafe and gallery. Or the anonymous knitter who donates for a pattern.  Or Rooknits and Picperfic who coordinated the 2010 raffle blankets and all the individuals who donated their knitting time to make squares to create beautiful throws. All these acts of kindness make a huge difference.

Jacqui, modelling her Flowers in the Rain design at Woolfest in July

You’ve helped Dr Ekdahl deliver two healthy babies to Haseena and Jamila in flood striken Pakistan.You’ve helped prevent, control and treat cholera outbreaks in Haiti. You’ve helped vaccinate thousands of vulnerable people in Niger against meningitis. You’ve helped raise nearly £22,000, over US$4000 and 1,500 Euro for MSF since p/hop started.

Good eh? If you helped p/hop raise money for MSF, in any way, no matter how small, in 2010 give yourself a pat on the back, a nice cup of tea,some knitting time, and start thinking about what we can do in 2011.

Photo from MSF UK

Thank you.

Added at 10pm: After I wrote this the UK fund raising total went over £22,000! What a brilliant start to 2011. Don’t forget you can also donate in US dollars, Euros or make a donation in your local currency to your country’s MSF office.

We had a hoot at The Bothered Owl Christmas Party last week. There was tea, wine, mince pies, plenty of nibbles, good food and great company. It was a great evening for socialising and knitting in a lovely relaxed atmosphere. Onehandknits has written a good review of the evening here though I feel I should yarn you, it contains a lot of lovely yarn.

Sadie aka Whitehart and Sarah aka SarahAbroad volunteered at our table where we had our favourite gift knitting patterns available for donation. Sadie had brought along a pair of Cranford Mitts (I think the 8th pair of the nine pairs she has made!) which we borrowed as a sample. The Cranford Mitt-a-long was so popular we extended it to the end of December so please join in the fun over on Ravelry.

Sadie and her Cranford Mitts

We’re also having a knit-a-long for our Christmas Stocking pattern. I made one of these as I wasn’t sure if our sample would arrive in time for Christmas but it only took me a weekend to knit it. A big thank you to Crochet-y-knitter for her beautiful sample. If you’re a little nervous about stranded knitting take a look at this great tutorial (scroll down) to get inspired.

We raised £46.56 at the Bothered Owl party which is pretty good for an evening of scoffing delicious mince pies, vegan sausage rolls and eyeing up gorgeous yarn. A big thank you to everyone who made a donation and to Sarah and Sadie for giving up their free time to help out and a huge thank you to the Bothered Owls for inviting us to such a fun event.

Seasons Greeting to you all, I hope you have a peaceful and happy festive holiday.

We’re off to a Seasonal Knitting Event on Monday, The Bothered Owl’s Christmas Party, which will feature nibbles, drinks, yarn shopping and p/hop as well as good friends and festive cheer. I’m taking along our best Giftmas knitting patterns and am looking forward to chatting with knitters, the lovely Bothered Owl team, and munching mince pies.

If you’re going to a festive knitting event why not take a few copies of you favourite patterns along to help spread the p/hop word. We still have some of our postcards so if you would like some to take to an event please get in touch.

You can also support MSF by buying their Seasonal Cards.

Most of us knitters like to make special, lovingly hand crafted gifts for people at Christmas. You can also give something very special through MSF. MSF have teamed up with gifts4good to offer various medical kits as gifts. Your recipient will receive an email telling them what your gift will do. eg £15 will provide someone with antiretroviral therapy for a month or £150 will buy a surgical kit. At my old work place we used to club together and buy a large gift for good instead of small gifts for each other. 100% of the money goes directly to MSF and there is no waste as it’s all done by email. Brilliant!

The air is getting colder, the mornings crisper and the evenings are drawing in. All a sure sign that Christmas is getting close. My children have written their Christmas lists; the nine year old has been quite frugal this year, only requesting six gifts and all at very reasonable prices. My six year old, not yet having learned the words ‘modest’, ‘frugal’ or ‘reasonable’ has a list three pages long, and appears to be a word for word copy of a toy catalogue which hit our doormat last week. And so the fun begins!

As a crafter, Christmas has probably been in my thoughts for a little longer than those of other people. I had completed at least two of my main presents before the kids went back to school in September, although I seem to have become complacent, resting on my laurels after this early start and now I’m wondering how I’ll manage to get everything done in time. I think that maybe many of my outstanding gifts will be foodie ones; I have some mint liqueur and orange brandy maturing in the kitchen, as well as a lovely recipe for onion marmalade which I’m quite sure will go down very well with the in-laws. Add in a couple of boxes of chocolate truffles and everyone will be happy.

Of course, Christmas music is playing in all the shops, and the decorations are getting more and more plentiful. On November 10th, together with my husband and children, I headed into Cardiff to see the Christmas lights being switched on. Doctor Who and his companions would be doing the honours, so my two fanboy children were very eager to go and stand in the cold for an hour to see them. We turned up reasonably ahead of time, but were still later than many hundreds of people who had obviously decided to brave the cold for far longer! Although, with so many people there, and packed in tightly together, it wasn’t actually that cold. We pushed and wriggled our way towards the front, to try to get a good view of the stage. We got within about fifty feet when we had to give up and make the best of where we were. Cardiff Council had erected two giant screens so that those of us a fair way from the stage still had half a chance of seeing anything. However, I am only 5′3″ tall, and my husband is a scant couple of inches taller than that so we really didn’t stand much of a chance.

Undeterred, we hoisted the boys on our shoulders (have you tried carrying nine and six year olds for any length of time? Who needs to go to the gym for weight work?) who then had a wonderful view of everything which was happening. Unfortunately, my six year old isn’t so hot with the camera, so I didn’t get any pictures of the switch-on. But then there was a fireworks display which made up for the poor view and the aching shoulders, so I felt much happier!

I love taking pictures of fireworks; they always look so dramatic. Anyway, once the Christmas lights were switched on, the event was over and the crowd dispersed. On the way back to the car park, I captured a couple of photos of Cardiff’s Christmas decorations;

They’ve gone for a blue theme again this year. It looks very lovely, but always makes me feel even colder! I’m looking forward to when they go back to red and green and gold. I’m a traditionalist when it comes to decorating for Christmas!

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Thank you for blogging with us Jensta79. To read more from Jensta click here.

The blog-a-long officially finished last week but like all the best parties is going on into the small hours. You can read all the guest blogger posts here.

You can help spread the p/hop word by following us on twitter @msf_phop and by joining in the fun in our friendly Ravelry group with yarn swaps, knit-a-longs plus all the latest p/hop news.

Birthdays are funny things, and I usually do my best to ignore mine altogether.  Mostly it works!  My birthday falls the week before p/hop’s own birthday, so it seems I’m in good company at least.

I had a knitterly birthday this year, with a whole weekend spent with two fabulous knitting buddies, doing little more than eating, talking, and playing with lots of yarn.  Sounds like a perfect birthday for a knitter, doesn’t it?

We spent countless hours marvelling at the endless boxes of yarn that our friend has stashed away (I won’t mention names in order to protect the privacy of stashers-anonymous).  I’d been starting to think that my own stash is getting a bit out of control, but after seeing this collection (for collection truly is the right word for it), I’ve been put back in my place.

We took it upon ourselves to bring the yarn out in to the light.  We pulled out box after box, rummaging through shelves and climbing in to the loft to discover more goodies.  It’s amazing how many hours can be spent just sorting through luscious skeins, gathering inspiration from different colours and textures.  I felt like a kid in a sweet shop.  The yarn was spread too far and wide (and hidden in all sorts of places) to get a comprehensive “before” photo, but after a weekend of much fondling, here’s how the stash looked when we’d finished with it:

not a bad collection...

Of course, that’s only the sock yarn collection (excluding Wollmeise, which has its own category) and is now known amongst the local knitting community as my friend’s  own personal yarn shop!  My friend and I have quite different colour preferences, but nonetheless she had a perfect little something in her stash, and I went home cuddling the most delicious skein of Casbah.  I’ll have to do some serious queue-hunting to choose just the right pattern for it.

Happy woolly birthday p/hop!

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Thank you Larissa. You can read more of Larissa’s adventures in travel and yarn here.

The blog-a-long officially finished last week but like all the best parties is going on into the small hours. You can read all the guest blogger posts here.

You can help spread the p/hop word by following us on twitter @msf_phop and by joining in the fun in our friendly Ravelry group with yarn swaps, knit-a-longs plus all the latest p/hop news.

There’s a great four page spread all about p/hop in the latest issue of Yarn Forward magazine (issue 25, June 2010).

Here’s Pete reading all about it!

Hello to any new readers who’ve found us through Yarn Forward. You can keep up-to-date with all the p/hop news here on the blog, via our twitter feed and in the p/hop Ravelry group. Please feel free say hello back to us, we’d love to hear from you.

You may recognise Pete from the article, he’s the one holding* his now infamous scarf for Arsene Wenger.

We’d like to say a BIG THANK YOU to the Yarn Forward team for the feature.

Now back to knitting my scarf for the PHKCOW competition. I’m in the office tomorrow and must beat Pete. My knitting pride is at stake.

*Note that’s Pete holding his scarf, not knitting it

Spring into spring with this gorgeous Chic Spring Beret kindly donated to p/hop by talented designer Jane Crowfoot and the staff at The Knitter magazine.

The beret uses four colours of DK yarn and is a good introduction to Fair Isle (stranded colour) knitting. If you’re new to Fair Isle knitting there are lots of good tutorials on the internet including one on the KnittingHelp.com website (scroll down for the video) or just ask in the p/hop group on Ravelry if you need any advice.

If you want to see what the beret looks like in other colourways take inspiration from what others have made on Ravelry.

To read more about the Chic Spring Beret pattern and download the PDF click here. Happy Knitting!

The stunning Dido Shawl and Dido Scarf pattern has been generously designed and donated to p/hop by Åsa Tricosa.

The pattern can be knit as either a shawl or scarf and uses 4ply yarn.

To find out more and download a copy of the pattern in return for a donation to Médecins Sans Frontières click here.

Don’t forget to follow us on twitter or join the p/hop Ravelry group to keep up with the latest news and new patterns. Happy Knitting!

Thanks to the generosity of designer Karen Wessel (aka quesselchen) we have a new p/hop sock pattern.

These gorgeous Stained Glass Window Socks work brilliantly with graduated yarn colours as well as combinations of solid and variegated yarns. Let your imagination run wild…

To find out more and download a copy of the pattern in return for a donation to Médecins Sans Frontières click here.

Don’t forget to follow us on twitter or join the p/hop Ravelry group to keep up with the latest news and new patterns. Happy Knitting!