The festival season is in full swing so this weekend,  Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th July the P-Hop roadshow will find itself in (we hope) sunny Bedfordshire for the second Fibre East festival which promises to be even bigger and better than last year.

Fibre East is held at Scald End Farm, Thurleigh near Bedford. It is a proper, working farm with a farm shop. We will be in Marquee C on Stall 25. We will have our full range of patterns with us plus some new samples. Look out particularly for some of our new patterns, especially the Ermintrude Mitts and Teeny Tiny Teddies – these were so popular at Woolfest that we ran out of patterns for both of these so come early!

Finally, if anyone would like to volunteer to help on the stall we would be very grateful – please get in touch here or on our Ravelry group.

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

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.