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
Giant crocheted doily appears under Bristol bridge
The 12ft (3.6m) diameter "spider web" was seen hanging under Stapleton Road railway bridge by Gail Boyle as she drove into work . click here to learn more Thanks to Paul for finding this - great fun
Justhands-on.tv Sewing Getaway Weekend
Car is loaded with quilts and fabric and ready to go - just need to pack the suitcase; Dunford House (our venue in Midhurst - find out more in the classified ads) is full to bursting; Jennie will be teaching her Superstar Medallion quilt; Myfanwy will be showing her students how to use the embellisher (and we have one to play with for the rest of us with the opportunity of getting a Janome embellisher of our own at a VERY GOOD price - exclusive to Justhands-on.tv) plus bringing her Winifrid Cottage shop of goodies: Val will be making quick quilts with her students using up Fat 1/4s; and Wendy will be making sure it all runs smoothly for us.
8th Prague Patchwork Meeting Competitions
For those of you interested in competing here are the details of the competitions and the dates of the events: Authors of the topics for 2014 are members of the traditional patchwork club BPK. The artist collection (this time Embroidered Surfaces) will be replaced with MOTHER NATURE, the technique is not limited. The traditional patchwork compe-tition will be featuring APPLICA-TION as one of the basic tech-niques in every basic workshop.