Love knitting and crochet (and other fibre arts)? Adore social media? Admire life-saving humanitarian work and want to make a difference?

Can you donate eight hours a week of your time?

Then p/hop needs you!

What does this role involve?

1) Running this blog, tweeting social media awesomeness, sharing the latest news with p/hop fans worldwide and raising awareness about MSF’s awesome life-saving work!

Have any more questions?

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.

Yes, P-Hop is on the road again, this time we are heading for Scotland. We are really pleased to have been invited to the second Glasgow School of Yarn which is taking place on Friday 19th and Saturday 20th October 2012 at the beautiful Mackintosh Church, Queen’s Cross, 870 Garscube Road, Glasgow G20 7EL.  

I as P-HOP  Co-ordinator will be looking after the stall but would be very grateful to anyone who would like to come and help, even if only for a short while. We have some new patterns since last year, particularly some cosy mitts and snuggly cowls and neck pieces, perfect for seasonal gift knitting or a treat for yourself to chase away the autumn chills. We look forward to seeing you there!

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.

So yesterday, I walk into the MSF fundraising meeting (to talk about p/hop naturally) with my knitting under my arm. I carry my knitting in a scotch tube (Natalie, I know you’ll be proud), Bowmore if you’re interested. It’s great because it’s a perfect fit and the needles don’t break in my bag, a problem I have had twice before. It’s bad because people assume I’m an alcoholic carrying a bottle of scotch everywhere.

I take my seat in between Anne and James from supporter services. These are the lovely peeps who look after MSF supporters – if you’ve phoned the office for any reason, there’s a good chance you’ve spoken to them. I settle down and pop the top of the Bowmore tube. Concentrating not on what I am doing but on the person speaking, I pull the needles from the tube. Slowly the realisation dawns on me that there is no wool on the end of either needle. Words appear in my head that aren’t repeatable on a blog such as this. Luckily they don’t make it out of my mouth and startle Sam who is talking about trends in the proportion of visitors to our site who are using smart phones. I spend the rest of the meeting silently panicking, imagining my scarf self-unwinding every minute I am sitting there.

The meeting ends and I go downstairs, pull out the wool and stare at it. I have no idea what to do. I try to rethread it but the loops are twisted and the yarn ends up coming out somewhere in the middle of the row. I hear frogging noises in my head.

Just at that moment, our lovely reception volunteer Lorna walks past and out of sheer desperation I ask her if she knits. Knits? Of course she does!

Five minutes later she returns, and returns my scarf with not a row dropped. I ask if she has heard of p/hop (she is new here). She hasn’t, so I show her the site and she loves it. And what’s not to love??

So I just want to end this frankly fascinating tale (for those of you who have got this far) by repeating what I’m sure I have said before… that p/hop is a wonderful thing and an inspiration to me. And whether you are here for the first time or are a p/hop veteran, you are part of something very special and should be proud.

Now, back to the knitting, two more donations just came in.

NOTE: Closing date for CVs for the p/hop intern/voluntary position is Thursday (24th Sept)!

So, I am advertising for a new Lou… It’s got to be someone who loves MSF (obviously), thinks p/hop is the coolest project around (who wouldn’t) and has the imagination and organisation to carry p/hop to even greater heights.

Also, it would be great if it was someone who enjoyed writing. Oh yeah, and if they knitted it would be a bonus!

If you know anyone like that who would be willing to give a day a week or so of their time, please give them my details.

There is a full job description available on the MSF website, although it is a little vague as p/hop tends to throw the unexpected at us. Please feel free to send it to whoever might be interested…..

Thanks

Pete