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
Frixion Pens – the debate goes on.
Question: Have you ever used the Frixion pen and would you consider it safe to use on any fabric that will take the heat? I know we will have to test a sample of it but it seems to go against the grain to heat to remove, after all we use heat to set the Microtex pens! Answer: Bear in mind that these pens were not originally designed for use by quilters - we have adopted them!
I have not used these pens at all but Jennie has and mentions them in one of our videos; her word of caution is that they are re-activated by the cold - this could be through the postal service or through air conditioning.
Special Update News for all iPad and Tablet users
SPECIAL UPDATE
Tuesday 29th July 2014 We are very excited to be able to tell you, that as promised in our last newsletter, we have now made the website more user friendly for all our users and especially for those on iPads and Tablets. So, what does this mean for you? Changes to the screen size All users will notice that the video screens are bigger and slightly higher up the page.
Quilters Take Poppy Challenge
With 2014 marking the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War, some local artists are remembering in their own special way. Members of the St. Albert Quilters’ Guild took up the challenge this year of creating quilts with poppies incorporated into the designs to commemorate those who died in the war, which lasted from 1914 to 1918.