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
Look what Lyn Made
Hi Valerie...loved doing these projects.. .decided to mount the clock over a canvas board for stability...Lyn The Celtic clock is available as a kit through the shop and the Iron Caddy Tote you can watch the workshop video and/or purchase the pattern again from the shop patterns section.
What you can watch during May 2013
Well we have 5 Friday’s in this month so lots to enjoy and we start off with Part two of the visit we made to the Great Northern Quilt Show in Harrogate back in 2012; this time we are enjoying meeting some of the traders and catching up with what they have to offer as well as a very enjoyable interview with Susan Briscoe who is well known for her Japanese quilts.
Filming in Ledbury
We had a brilliant day filming the Living in the Middle exhibition at the Weavers Gallery in Ledbury - it runs until Sunday 12th May - more details on the events page; Lots of brilliant textile art by well known artists - amongst them Lesley Brankin, Edwina Mackinnon, Amanda Wright (the event organiser) and Hilary Beattie. the town is lovely too as you can see.