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
Old Christmas Cards – what do you do with them?
Christmas cards in a pile ; what now? Check them off a list and then recycle? Well yes but I also check through them for inspiration - while I am still in the Christmas mood and all that Christmas fabric is still looking at me. Here are a couple that I know I will work on: I just love the curly papercut tree and reindeer: plan is to enlarge and then trace onto Heat N Bond and then just fuse onto a winter background.
Ipad Cover a great success
I wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and also to share my completed i pad cover with you, which is a gift for my neighbour for Christmas.
I found the instructions easy and the end result looks a lot more complicated than it actually was. Fabrics found in the Lady Sew and Sew Warehouse in Henley.
Many thanks for the continuing inspiration, I've only been quilting for eighteen months and find your website very helpful for techniques, tips and inspiration.
Best wishes,
Roberta
Tote-it-all Bag in production
Just to say a big thank you for the tote bag workshop. I saw it yesterday afternoon and am now the proud owner of six new shopping bags. They were a great way of using up some very odd jelly rolls I bought on line and which had some very odd novelty prints in them. However made up as bags they look great!