Crochet
Bagalong is one year old! A new bag to celebrate…
Later on in June it will be the first anniversary of the bagalong that launched the Facebook group Bagalong with Crafternoon Treats. This lovely and lively group now has over 5000 members from all over the world. I find this amazing and I’m so pleased that its really taken off and that there is so much interest in making crochet bags.
Quick update on how to enter the charity raffle
The bag FULL of yarn and the Attic24 cupcake blanket pack is the prize and to enter, just make a donation direct to Marie Curie Cancer Care via the Just Giving page set up by Christine’s Woolshop (AKA Cityknits) in Birmingham. Each £1 donation gets to a ticket to win…
Remember the start of the Bagalong
The first bag we made was the retro granny stash bag and this has proved very popular over the last 12 months. The pattern for the bag is free and all the details are available here on my blog.
The second project we tackled was the fat bottomed bag in tribute to the blogger Wink of A Creative Being, who tragically took her own life at the end of June 2015. Many of the original members of the Facebook group made the bags and have made many others since. As we are approaching this first anniversary and have loads of new members, I thought it would be good to revisit the fat bottomed bag as this was, and still is, one of our favourites. You can never have too many!
I also had another reason for choosing to make this bag in the colours that I’ve chosen. A while ago I promised to make a bag to be part of a raffle prize for Christine’s Wool Shop in Birmingham. The three sisters who run the shop now have an online service called CityKnits and they run a Marie Curie Tea Party with an online raffle every June. Its all in memory of their mum, Christine, who started the shop over 30 years ago and who lost her life to cancer.
As you probably know, Marie Curie Cancer Care is a great organisation that provides caring nurses to go into people’s homes to allow them to spend their last weeks and days in familiar surroundings with their family beside them. They were so helpful to me three years ago when I was caring for my mum in her last weeks at my own home. Last year, I helped run a charity raffle for the Spring Flower Blanket, which raised almost £12,000. Thank you again to all those who entered and donated so generously at the same time.
This year, I’m going down to Birmingham on June 11 2016, the day of the Marie Curie Tea Party hosted by CityKnits and I’m greatly honoured to have been asked to draw the raffle. I am also very grateful to the lovely people at Stylecraft Yarns, who have offered to fill the bag with free yarn to add to the prize. These include some of the silk and alpaca yarns that they do! Its a selection good enough to eat! And if that wasn’t enough, Cityknits are also offering the Attic24 cupcake blanket pack as the rest of the prize!
How to enter to win all this lovely yarn!
Please do consider making a donation as the raffle is open worldwide and all of this lovely yarn will be shipped out to you, wherever you are.
Each £1 donation to Marie Curie Cancer Care via this Just Giving page gets you a ticket to win! If you donate £3 you get 3 tickets, £5 you get 5 tickets, and so on. Every pound (or dollar) that you can spare will go to help this fantastic charity. The nurses go into homes to help families take care of a loved one at the end of life. This kind of care is very traumatic and difficult and the Marie Curie nurses are angels in disguise. The charity relies on donations to keep going and every £1 donated is matched by the UK government. But without fundraisers, this valuable service that helps so many would simply disappear.
Its all very exciting and I’ve been busy making the bag and filming tutorials so that the lovely podcast viewers can participate and make a bag like this too. Go mad and make it in your own colours or to raise money for a charity close to your heart…
The tutorials so far are shown below – just click to watch or go to YouTube and subscribe to my channel and see more podcast episodes and all the tutorials collected together in a playlist.
Enjoy!
Kathryn what a lovely podcast thank you. I loved the vintage sewing boxes – I have two of them exactly the same as yours. Like you I didn’t need them but I am a sucker for nostalgia. I found the bracelet really sad but am so glad you bought them and rescued them. I really enjoy your podcasts and blog, thank you.
😘🙋🏻 Dorothy xx