About Us

About Us

We specialize in designing unique crochet graphghan patterns. What we make, you won't find elsewhere.

A husband and wife team; we launched Geeky Graphghans in 2019 create a home for our designs, and where customers could come to talk to us about custom graphghan designs.

Our greatest passion is designing custom graphghan patterns from photographs. These are called photoghans. We can take customer's photographs and enhance them, creating detailed pattern to crochet from; including a graph, color blocks and full written instructions matched to yarns we know work beautifully. 

If you'd like to know more just CLICK HERE to find out more.

Joanna 'The Wooly Duck'

''We're all stories in the end..''

When I was a little girl I remember watching my grandmother knitting with her eyes closed, the needles would just move in her hands and she was resting, It was totally mesmerizing to watch. My other grandmother was a crocheter and she would always crochet slippers for us.

I never showed much interest in either as a youngster- I crocheted a doily when I was about 10 but that's about it.I have always been drawn to art, drawing , painting, sculpting were always my thing , and books- lots and lots of books.

When I came to live in the UK from Poland over 15 years ago , i didn't have time to pursue any of my hobbies because I was too busy working. A few years later I met my now husband and life slowed down. Becoming a wife, mother was a different kind of life. The slow and frustrating at times new adventure had taken its toll on me and the depression had crept into my life. I had to find something to occupy my mind and so I bought a set of hooks and some yarn and with the help of YouTube turorials my adventure with crocheting has begun.

Hats, scarves. booties, dresses - yup done them and loved making them but...when I first saw a photo of a crocheted picture- my whole crochet world has changed.

My very first graphghan was a photoghan, a portrait of my youngest daughter. I made it for my Mother in law, later on finishing two more pictures of my other children to be joined into a big blanket. Since then I have decided to change it and make a new one 

I love designing patterns from photos and the harder they are to get right, the more I love and appreciate it. I draw a lot to get it just right and while it's not always possible to get a perfect pattern, I always try my best.

Designing them for others was a natural process for me and while mostly heartbreaking stories are behind each photo, it gives me a sense of purpose , to help people keep the memories of their loved ones for a little longer.

I joined Lobby's Team as a designer just over a year ago.

I am one of the UK designers in the CGL Group on Facebook (the other one being my husband John Michael). As you now know English is not my first language so I am very conscious about spelling mistakes, I am also blind in one eye so one of the reasons my business name - The Wooly Duck is spelled incorrectly is to remind me that we are not perfect and we all make mistakes and that's ok as long as we make amends.

I love crocheting photoghans as well as designing them , but unfortunately my pleas for extending the hours in the day to 48 have always been ignored by the Top Guy 

I have always been inspired in my crochet work by the amazing Lee Mac from Totaleenet who is such an amazing crochet portrait artist, she will forever be my Guru.

I design my patterns with a lot of care and it sometimes takes ages but I believe a good pattern is a make it or break it in the photoghan scenario.

I have tons of yarn at my house, I am lucky that my husband understands what I mean when I say I don't have the right shade of yarn, and he makes no remarks when yet another yarn delivery appears  . We live a quiet yet busy life with our three young children in a small town in the UK. Designing patterns while watching Doctor Who, or Merlin or LOTR "

John 'The Graphalo' Michael

With so few guys designing graphghans; one of the questions I get asked most is :

“How did you get in to this?”

Not many of you will know that I'm actually married to our other designer Joanna AKA The Wooly Duck 

For every geeky design suggestion I had for her, there was never enough time; the response was “why don't you make it?” So I took the plunge and asked her how. The learning was... torturous. Not for me I had great fun but for my poor wife had to put up with my endless questions and critiquing patterns until the were good enough to sell.

At last I was ready to launch my store on Etsy; I had the patterns ready but all I needed was a name for my store. I probably tried out about 50 different idea, mostly centered around the word 'graph' as that 's what I'd be making. In the end the answer fit perfectly; I'd probably read The Gruffalo to our kids a thousand times, its one of about a dozen stories I can reel off by rote (yes including the voices).... and so The Graphalo was born. God I love a bad pun (sad but true).

I like to specialize in geeky and niche designs, often inspired by the books I read, the tv shows and movies we watch. There's a fair bit of scope in what we design so we've built collections to make it easy to find what you're looking for - just click here to get started.

Since launching the store I've indulged more and more my nerdy, geeky side. With Joanna alongside me, we took the plunge and launched our own site. And so Geeky Graphghans was born. And as I tell her (oh so often); the best is yet to come...."