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
Tucks & Textures with Jennie Rayment
Val: Under the new idea of new films each week, ready for the weekend you can see Jennie Rayment demonstrating how to work tucks and texture; simple, honeycomb, add colour to the edges and much more. Also a great interview with Mandy Shaw - did you know that she and Jennie had history?!?
Revamping your jumper
Val: A member of my quilt group loves to take a booring jumper and revamp it with a bit of patchwork - and she's not afraid of just cutting bits off - as in the sleeves - or slicing it up the middle
Films every Friday
From now on you will have new films every week! They will go up onto the site on a Friday, so all ready for you to view over the weekend. Join Karin Hellaby, who we filmed at the Festival of Quilts, showing us how to make a variety of easy attic window blocks from her latest book, Sew Easy Attic Windows;.