Zombie and Woolly Hugs. Please join us, newcomers very welcome. Come and find out about Candy's Hugs.

[KnottyAndPistey]

Her legacy of Candy's Hugs will be one of love and strength, of coming together to show compassion, support and give and receive comfort.

Seven blankets already with women on the rocky road of cancer treatment in Candy's name. Love in every stitch we say and it really is true. Together we go on, Candy is with us every step.

For anyone joining us, and please do, this is an ongoing project, just jump right in, this explains what we are doing and all crafting info. Thank you EVERYONE! x

Just before Christmas, Zombie donated funds to Woolly Hugs and together we hatched a plan to develop an ongoing project with her, which she loved, to make comforting cosy blankets with love in every stitch for women going through treatment for breast and other cancers, and at times these may form part of palliative care.

So glad we could establish Candy's Hugs with her and thanks to you wonderful people achieve her ambition of seeing it all well underway before her death. Her legacy of Candy's Hugs will be one of love and strength, of friendship, learning and developing crafting skills, of creativity, of coming together to show compassion, support and give and receive comfort, Such a beautiful inspirational woman. How lucky we were to know her.

Anyone seeing this project for the first time, wondering about joining in, make this the day you do! This project is ongoing, and a friendlier more supportive bunch of folk you couldn’t wish to meet. We would love to have you on board, from someone who is keen to learn crochet or knitting to the more experienced, ALL are welcome here. And a lack of funds is no barrier, we have wonderful donors who want to take part and need a crafter, so we can send you yarn, needles and hooks if necessary. It is all about being inclusive and team work.

Our previous threads are the first one here and the second one here.. and third here

[[https://www.facebook.com/pg/Woolly-Hugs-349028448480855/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1339798112737212
We are keeping a photo album on our Facebook page.]] All welcome to join us over there too.

Zombie was a bright and beautiful woman so we chose a palette to reflect this which we call Vibrant Riot; it is inspired too by a blanket that was made for her to give hugs and comfort as she went through treatment. She had it with her at the end, we were so glad to know it still gave her love, big woolly hugs and comfort.

If you would like to be involved in any way, we’d love to have you on board. Please post on this thread and PM with your offers: crafting, donating, need wool, etc, we can help you with all of it.

The yarn is Stylecraft Special DK. Just this please for consistency, and in these colours...

Vibrant Riot Palette
Boysenberry
Claret
Empire
Fuchsia
Grass
Kelly green
Lavender
Lime
Lipstick
Magenta
Meadow
Petrol
Plum
Pomegranate
Saffron
Sherbet
Shrimp
Spice
Turquoise
Tomato
Violet

Squares to be 12 inch or 6 inch, crochet or knitted equally welcome, please use 4mm hook or needles. No blocking necessary and please sew in ends, and make sure any colour changes are firmly knotted.

All crafting abilities genuinely welcome, squares made by beginner or expert will be equally cherished. Simple, complex, single colour, mixed colour. It really is the love and thought that counts.

If you would like to learn how to knit or crochet in 2017, let's do it! We have help for the complete beginner here…. And all on this thread are on hand to help talk you through as well. YouTube has lots of tutorials, you WILL find one that suits! :)

If you feel ambitious and would like to make a whole blanket, then that is wonderful, we are aiming for blankets approx 48 inches by 60 inches, certainly no smaller.

Candy’s Hugs will be an ongoing project, our next collection date is March 11th, then April 22nd. Do message for posting info when ready.

We are on Facebook - Woolly Hugs and Twitter too @Woolly_Hugs both are good ways to keep in touch. ALL welcome over there.

Thank you so much

If it's any help, you can get the wool on eBay for 99p for a 100gm ball, and that's including the p+p. As we seem out of wool, I thought this might be an option for some of us.

Forget that last message, I checked it out a bit more throughly, it's more like £3.20 if you buy one ball! Cheeky sods, I HATE this kind of thing!!!

As we have a superb local quilting and wool shop, I had never realised it was hard to get hold of except online

It's £2.50 a ball in my local (still a national chain) shop, and they have have a really poor selection of colours (I think maybe 2 off the vibrant riot list). It's no wonder I buy stuff online.

Raptor how much??!!

Soft Touch in Tavistock, if anyone's in West Devon. All the shades and no rip-off.

It's the postage that is such a killer, pay £1.70 - £1.90 a ball then minimum £2.80 on postage Nuts!

We need to win!

When does the competition close? Just shared the link around a few people.

I want to get involved and send in some squares - is the next collection in a couple of weeks? I'll see what I have in my stash that is suitable and will probably just do some plain single colour ones if that's ok?

I've bought vacuum packed wool online. Cheaper postage, and it goes through a letterbox.

Thank you thank you thank you to the lovely Mumsnetter who sent me six balls of Stylecraft in gorgeous Zombie shades! They will look beautiful when knitted and crocheted!

Marcipex, where did you find it vacuumed packed?

I've had yarn (not Stylecraft though) from a few EBay sellers which has come vacuum packed.

I've just ordered some wool online to try and do some knitted squares. I've been practicing with cheap stuff from our local 'sells everything' shop but I've just seen the 4mm needles needed. I only have 3.5 and 5mm locally.

Will either of these do or do I need to head to hobby craft in town for 4mm?

I think it was eBay.
I got DH to hold it to show how thin it is. That is not my hairy hand
I don't know why suppliers don't do it.
It just pops up to size when it's opened.

Scalliondays I've been trying to learn to crochet for years without success, until I saw the YouTube videos recommended on here. It is so much easier to follow when you can watch someone doing it right!

The square I photographed uses only chain, double and treble crochet, so very simple stitches, but it looks more complicated than it is. At the moment I'm doing a 6" square in an evening, so much quicker than knitting, for me at least.

Give it a try

Want to thank K&P for the wool I received yesterday (after postman redelivered it, was out at work the first time). I'm loving the colours, they are all amazing and so good to work with xx

As a relative newbie on these threads can I ask a couple of questions- and apologies if these have been answered previously !
Candys Hugs is an ongoing project, so do the posting dates Knotty and Pistey give us relate to Candy squares, or are they for other WH projects?
Also, do we need to PM for an address each time we have squares to send, as reading posts further up the thread am assuming the Functioneers ( or Fettlers as I call them ! ) are spread over the country ?
Hope everyone is having a good weekend : it's ending up a bit grey and drizzley here, so excellent knitting weather !

K+P. If there's a WH shortage of SSDK and anyone is desperate for a ball or two I can pop some in post tomorrow

Yia Candy is ongoing as are some of the other hugs. Chernobyl has final deadline of early April.
I'm assuming the address given for Candy will remain the same for the foreseeable but I believe it's different to the Chernobyl address (which I don't have yet).
I think all the posting dates are on the WH website.

Are there any woolly huggers in Liverpool out there? Would love to meet up and discuss different patterns and techniques x

Balls balls balls. I've measured my 12 inch square that I've almost finished and it is more like 14

I have another 12 inch and 4 six inch to post tomorrow. My very first hug parcel!

Afternoon - been slacking here today- other things needed doing :)
My nearest Stylecraft suppliers are called Boyes ( a rather cheap end store) which have most colours in at £1.95 - think maybe only East /North Yorkshire though . Mind you - they had run out of Sage when I went to get some . The proper wool shop sells them at £1.99 , but don't keep all the colours.

Thanks, User : think I had a romantic and unrealistic vision of K and P all alone, in a little Woolly Hug cottage in the countryside, surrounded by ever- growing piles of squares, as they single- handedly crafted our offerings into beautiful blankets.....

Phew, finished my first 12 inch square. 12 is a lot of inches!

I've been asked to send everything to the one address but to label stuff as to if it's Candy Hugs, Chernobyl Hugs, of Refugee Hugs