About Gaynor
Gaynor is a crochet-obsessed teacher and pattern designer from Wokingham in Berkshire.
She learned to knit and crochet as a child, trained and worked as a French teacher for over 10 years, and then picked up her hook again 10 years ago. Gaynor jokes that she is “lucky enough to call myself a full-time hooker…”
In 2012, Gaynor set up The Barkham Hookers crochet group with a few friends in her living room. They now run 4 group sessions a week as well as many regular private lessons with over 600 members on Facebook alone. You can find them on Facbook via The Barkham Hookers’ Charity Group, where many of their charity projects can be seen.
She is very proud of the fact that The Barkham Hookers raised over £60,000 for various national and international charities, £52,000 of that for the Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal. Click here to watch Gaynor share a quick and easy method for crocheting a poppy.
Gaynor loves designing and making blankets, many of which can be found as free CALs (crochet-a-longs) on her blog: Confessions of a Barkham Hooker. During the pandemic, she designed the Coronavirus CAL, posting a new section daily then weekly with colourful pictures and detailed notes.
Signature Technique
Crochet Blankets incorporating a variety of patterns and colours
Top Tips
- Crochet is very forgiving. Don’t be afraid to adjust or change the pattern to suit your needs or likes. And remember, if in doubt pull it out!
- Use a larger hook to work a long foundation chain to avoid it curling up.
- If you work quite loosely choose a slightly smaller hook than advised and a larger hook if you work tightly.
- When working in rows do not forget to work into the last stitch – – which is probably the chain 2/3 made at the start of the previous row.
- Use military buttons as the centre in poppies to add something special.
- If you are working with several balls of yarn, chuck them on the floor and let gravity help you keep them untangled.
Videos
Patterns
Posts
Twiddling, Fiddling and some Magic too -A Weekend Retreat in Henley on Thames
What a super time we all had; there was sewing for two days at the Lady Sew and Sew warehouse in Henley and then dinner at the Red Lion Hotel in Henley followed by the hilarious talk from Jennie Rayment. The sewing schedule was, for me as a tutor, a little different in that I only had to prepare to teach for a one-day workshop - teaching half the delegates on day 1 and then the other half on day 2. There was a little Magic 4 from me, and some Twiddling and Fiddling from Jennie and from the delegates point of view they got the benefit of both of us without having to move!!!
40 Minute Scrap Quilt – 1,000,000 views and counting…
We have some amazing news - Valerie's 40 minute quilt video has taken the internet by storm and has been viewed over ONE MILLION times on You Tube - making her our very own internet phenomenon. Some of you may have already watched Valerie's 40 minute scrap quilt video - it's an amazingly quick and easy quilt - that's great for anyone to make.
21 April 2017
New Videos Every Friday #1million views and counting Recently, [...]