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
To try to keep you in touch
Here is a lovely comment from one of our viewers: Hi, as a member of this brilliant club , I would love to win this month's giveaway prize Thank you so much for your hard work, it is much appreciated. It keeps us in touch with the quilting world.
Kind Regards
Carol and it is what we aim to do - So keep watching for more from Jennie, Angela Daymond, Paula Doyle and myself as we share new workshops and some of our favourite things.
Update 21st August 2015
Workshops We get more helpful advice from Jennie, our expert [...]
To mark or not to mark- that is often the question
We are talking about quilting here; and I have always thought that if I can avoid adding any marking lines to my quilt that's the best option - nothing to remove and therefore worry about. However in today's world and if, like me, you can't draw, then marking can become necessary and there are many marking pencils and pens and chalks on the market for us to choose from - the latest of which are the Frixion Pens.