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
Festival of Quilts 2010 – day 1- postcript
Val; What a first day!! Advance ticket sales must have been huge - they were starting to queue at 9am (doors didn't open until 10!) still Starbucks did a roaring trade. It was BUSY; hopefully everyone had a good time; we didn't get to have lunch until 4pm! Lots of overseas visitors (and by that I don't mean just north and west where they print their own version of our money!).
Festival of Quilts 2010 – day 1
Val: Well after sailing through all the checkpoints yesterday because there were girls in charge, we had a slow crawl through this morning; give a man a yellow jacket and a clipboard and 'jobsworth' rains. Still a few last minute things to primpt and price but otherwise ready for action.
Girls on the move
Val: Three girls and a van full of fabric join hundred sof others at the NEC for the the major textile event of the year - Festival of Quilts; Isabelle from Creative Quilting with Lesley Owens and Valerie Nesbitt ready to roll up the M40: complete with jacket for Sunday's filming day!. One empty space at the NEC that needs filling (10m x 2m) ; maybe we should have a picnic and compare notes.