guess something, win one tree

We popped over to the opening of the new howies shop on Carnaby street last week to be warmly greeted by Ade with champagne and smoothies.

It's their first ever shop so they celebrated in style (note the matching t-shirt and champagne labels) albeit a couple of months after they first opened.

I left with 2 of the 500 trees they gave out to mark the occasion and to help bring a bit of the countryside to us city folk.

One of them is now happy in my back garden but the other is looking for a good home to 'grow slow and grow strong'. If you fancy winning a special edition Silver Birch, a nice little 'Cardigan Bay to Carnaby Street' booklet, any guys or girls T-Shirt you like from the current howies collection and few smoothies, just answer the below question as a comment to this post:

How many trees will our treeometer be showing at the close of Buy One Get One Tree at midnight on Monday 10th December?

Leave your guess by midnight on Friday 7th December - all comments left after this will be invalid as it will be too close to be a fair guess. One guess each. No cheating.

Good luck.

the happy carriage

Ade's been talking to our Ceri (pictured above behind the glass) and he's had a great idea.

I'm in. Let me know when they say yes.

Anyone else?

Update: Ade's idea got turned down, find out why here. Oh well, at least he tried.

what's a wattson?

This is a wattson...

It's a very clever little gadget that tells you how much energy your home is using, both in numbers (the cost of your annual electricity bill if you were to carry on using the same amount of electricity as you are at that point in time) and in colour (if it glows red you're using a lot of electricity, blue if you're keeping things lean).

Apparently the first thing most people do is see how low they can get the number and how close to blue they can get the glow, and then keep it like this as often as possible. Hence they use less electrity, hence less CO2. It's a great step towards prevention rather than cure.

A wattson can work out positively for your bank balance as a long term investment and positively for the planet as an even longer term investment. Studies have shown both electricity bill savings and accompanying CO2 cuts of up to 15%.

I spotted it in the new howies shop on Carnaby Street last weekend. Here's Ade in his shop just before it opened.

We'll have more about the new howies shop soon.

how to split a log with Ade from howies

Back in June we went to a very interesting conference called 'interesting 2007' that we told you about here. Our friend Ade from howies gave a great 3-minute talk on how to split a log properly. Living in the city you can sometimes lose touch with such skills so it's nice to get a reminder every now and again. Over to Ade (after a short introduction by Johnnie)...

If you liked that there are more interesting things here. We also liked this one about doing things you're good at.

a very interesting day

A few of us went to a little conference called interesting 2007 organised by our friend Russell Davies on Saturday (Russell's blog was one of the first things we added to the 'stuff we like' bit in the right hand column of this blog) . Interesting 2007 did exactly what it said on the tin, it was interesting, very interesting. One of the highlights included another friend of ours, Ade from howies (who make our t-shirts) discussing how best to cut up a log.

our Meera talking to howies' Ade about something interesting (maybe his own pink t-shirt?), Rhodri in the background worrying about acoustics, and some good bunting.

And a man called Rhodri playing a remarkable rendition of Wichita Lineman on a saw...

We provided some smoothies for the thirsty.

We're very much looking forward to interesting 2008.

ade in town

The ladies of Fruit Towers got excited last week when Ade from howies nipped in for a visit. As you might have read on these pages before, Ade has a small but dedicated fanclub here at Fruit Towers.

Ade posed for a couple of shots before travelling back to Wales and encountering some robot food on the way home.

second ade

The Ade fanclub is growing.

ade

There is a lot of love for Ade from Howies at Fruit Towers. The girls are building a little shrine to him - I think he's been helping them out massively with a big new order of t-shirts for Fruitstock. Watch out Mrs Ade.