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
Stuttering films
Val: If you are new to the site we hope you are enjoying it. Should you find that the films aren't running smoothly, the data file to download onto your machine is quite large, so here is a little trick: once you have pushed the play arrow in the centre of the filmscreen, you will see a pause option appear in the bottom section (it looks like this II); if you pause the film, it will continue to load in the background - you can see this as a different colour line appearing and growing longer - which will allow you to pop off and make a cup of tea, so that when you come back the film will run smoothly and you can enjoy watching the films as you sup your tea (or wine and/or other beverage!)
Textile Museum of Canada
Val: Just back from a couple of weeks visiting in Toronto, Canada; while there I cam across the hidden gem of the Textile Museum of Canada - located at 55 Centre Avenue. The current exhibition runs until Feb 2011 and is called 'Drawing with Scissors' and features Molas from Kuna Yala - fascinating; there are also several other exhibits always running on the building as well as a children's floor where they can has a hands-on experience with fibres - weaving and such - as well as experience different cottons, wools etc. more info at www.textilemuseum.ca
September 2010
As you know we were all at the Festival of [...]