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
Water Water Exhibition in Henley
An exhibition of work by girls from the Contemporary Quilt group which is running until 5pm tomorrow (Tues 19th). Organised by Kate Findlay it is well worth a visit if you are in the neighbourhood but if not don't worry as Valerie and the cameras will be there tomorrow so you will be able to enjoy it from the comfort of your home early in 2014.
Newsletters
Today was the day we sent out the second of our newsletters for November – did you get yours? If not please let us know. We were recently forced to change our email provider and we have discovered that certain email addresses are a little more difficult to send through to – these may include those at blueyonder; tiscali; talk talk and aol (and that includes Jennie and Valerie so we aren’t singling anyone out!!!) Our Tech team are trying to get to the bottom of the problem or indeed find a work-around, so please bear with us. You can read the current missive by clicking here: Don’t forget that you can watch on your iPad (but you might need a little help from Puffin!).
News update15th November 2013
It’s Friday again so there must be some new videos [...]