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.

Dear knitters and crocheters

Thank you very much for all the hats you have made for MSF’s clinic in Pakistan. As you can see we were overwhelmed with your kindness.

These are only around half the hats as you made a whopping 433 hats (yes we counted them all).

At present we DO NOT need any more hats or other knitted items but please follow our blog as we may have requests in the future. Thank you again to all of you who sent hats in. They will be cherished.

Please browse our wide selection of patterns as you can still help MSF’s work in over sixty countries by donating for your hours of pleasure.

Best wishes

Clare

PS if you have made hats but haven’t sent them in why not take a look at the charity knitting groups on Ravelry who will know of lots of organisations who can use baby hats.

If you glance to your right and take a look at our Just Giving Widget you will see that we, that’s me and you and all the fibre-fans who have contributed to p/hop, have raised over £33,000 for Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF). This is fantastic. We’re still a way off from reaching our target for this year of £40,ooo, but we’re getting closer.

At the moment MSF staff are working flat out in South Sudan, with 15,000 people who are struggling to survive without fresh water. This shocking situation has not reached our mainstream media but you can help spread the word. This video with MSF doctor Erna is on Vimeo and the news story is here.

If you are unable to watch the video here’s part of what Erna says:

“We went early on Tuesday morning to provide medical assistance and rehydration points along the route,” says Doctor Erna Rijnierse, MSF’s medical team leader.

“It was a truly shocking sight as we witnessed some of the weakest dying as they walked – too dehydrated for even the most urgent medical care to save them.”

She adds: “The scale of what is happening here is shocking, even for experienced emergency team members who have seen a lot.”

While you may be feeling helpless you can make a difference. Share the news of what is happening to people in South Sudan, tell your friends, tweet about it, share the video on facebook. As always, your donations through p/hop go straight to MSF’s work, where it is needed, whether or not it is on the news.

Thank you.

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.

The photo above says everything I was going to say in this blog post.

This is an MSF team outside one of the many clinics MSF runs in Somaliland.

A big thank you to everyone who has made p/hop a success in 2011.

Here’s to a happy and peaceful 2012.

Happy New Year!

It’s quite a while after the fabulous Fibreflurry, but quite a lot has happened between then and now (including us reaching our £30,000 target!).

It was my first show manning the p/hop stall (while the lovely Clare had a much needed holiday) and we had a lovely day chatting to all the visitors. One thing that did impress me was how many people already knew about p/hop, listening to people come up to the stall, and turning to the person next to them to explain what p/hop is all about was fantastic.

Laying out the stall required a bit of imagination as we didn’t have anything to display the gorgeous samples on. In the end we put all the samples on the printed patterns and I think it worked quite well. P/hop now has so many patterns that we managed to fill the whole table with them, but of course that’s not to say we wouldn’t love to have more patterns, the lace shawls were particularly popular, as were the ubiquitous Cranfords (as mentioned on the BBC Radio 4 today programme!).

Thank you to the lovely YarnAddict Anni designer of the Trinity Shawlette for permission to use her photo of the stall.

We managed to raise a fantastic £320.64, so a big thank you to all the knitters who donated for patterns, the designers who donate them, everyone who I badgered to buy a raffle ticket, and the stall holders for donating the prizes. Also thank you to the lovely Fibreflurry team for looking after us so well. (oh and thank you to my Mum who came along for the day as well!)

We had a fantastic weekend at KnitNation a few weekends ago. Thanks to dismal weather our stand in the KnitTea Salon was heaving, especially at lunchtimes and we met hundreds of lovely and generous knitters. Many of you already knew about p/hop which is great for us to hear but we also met people who support MSF’s work but didn’t know they had a knitting section and people who didn’t know about MSF or p/hop but whose faces lit up when we told them about our fundraiser.

Something else that made people smile was our new pattern. Knitters were bowled over by Ros Clarke’s Cricket Tea Cosy and it proved to be so popular that we ran out of patterns on Sunday. Luckily it is on our website so you can download it here. It was also great being able to offer something to crocheters and our Mobeius Cowl pattern was also popular with both experienced and novice hook wielders.

Whitehart aka Sadie volunteered with us on Saturday so we were able to snap her with our sample of her intriguing Tzenni sock pattern…

and we spotted Lyndsey aka Bagpuss in the middle of knitting a pair of Cranford mitts.

We also spotted people wearing our patterns (not Tea Cosies, not yet anyway…), especially the ever popular Trinity Shawl which we admired in a variety of yarns and styles of wear.

Here is Ewenique in her beautiful golden Trinity…

… Wonkyknitter in her’s which is made from her very own fabulous Shetland handspun yarn

and YellowPurpleZebra wearing her Trinity which was knit for her by partner and new knitter Lethaniol.

YellowPurpleZebra also helped us pack away the stand at the end of the show and as always we couldn’t have had our stand without many people’s help. Here comes the Oscar part, with a teapot in a cricket jumper instead of a little gold man.

A big THANK YOU to Alice, CookieA for donating the display space and kit as well as for organising a wonderful event for fibre fans and to the KnitNation Crew for all their hardwork, friendliness and professionalism making the event run smoothly. Another BIG THANK YOU to all our volunteers who gave up their shopping time in the marvellous and tempting market place to talk to knitters about p/hop and guide people to the patterns that suit them. They are lapurplepenguin (who used her work volunteering time to help me get everything ready on Friday and lug all the patterns over to South Kensington as well as help on the Saturday), DianneB, Whitehart,jabberknit,  jackier, LornaB, Alpacaaddict and to Lzi who gave me and the p/hop display a lift home which was a massive help and saved MSF money and me a taxi kerfuffle. You are all mervellous and we couldn’t have done it without you.

Phew. After all that how did we do? Fanfare please……..

We raised a whopping £984.80 for MSF so here is my final THANK YOU to everyone who came and chatted to us and made a donation. All your kindness has been turned into tangible things like measles vaccinations, nutrition kits, malaria treatments and the like. Pretty good going for people who dabble with sticks and string. Knitters, we are awesome.

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.