the wonderful knitting of Susan Smith

Does the name Susan Smith ring a bell? We've mentioned her once or twice before. Why? Because she's an absolutely genius knitter. What this woman can't knit, we just don't know (and nor do we want to know about it). Here she is with a Florence Nightingale smoothie cover.

Her needlework first caught our attention with the Unicorn big knit hat last year, along with a little Robin and a kicking-heeled Santa. This year she sent us some absolute gems, including this one of Mary, Joseph, and a tiny Baby Jesus.

Susan popped by the towers for tea and cake last week, and happened to bring along some of her other knitting work. We were amazed, and just had to share some of them with you. Such as her garden gnomes.

Finger puppets of Sooty and Sweep.

And a caveman, cavewoman, and their pet monster.

A big thank you to Susan for brightening up our Friday afternoon, and showing us how much more there is to knitting than we'd ever imagined.

our pledge

Tackling food waste is really important to us as a business, so we're really happy to be one of the first business to sign up to the Feeding the 5000 Food Waste Pyramid. 

The pledge has been developed in partnership with Love Food Hate Waste and is supported by the Mayor of London, and it offers businesses a really simple set of priorities to follow to help them save resources and divert waste from landfill.

We have waste reduction targets in place already and donate any excess drinks to the charity Fareshare or to be used as animal feed, but we're always looking at ways we can improve and we know that this will be a great help to us and to others who are looking to do things a bit more responsibly.

more 3D chalk

Last week we showed you the wonders of 3D chalk. Today we can show you what it looks like coloured in. Hats off to the designers of the The Lego Terracotta Army.


 
Thanks to Leon Keer for letting us use his photo.

owls for auction and hat tag winners

You may remember this little gem of a big knit hat as knitted by Hazel Baker, a cranky owl. Would you like to own him? Would you also like to raise more money for Age UK? Well you can do both of these things, by placing a bid on him on ebay. Good luck.

In other news, here are this week's hat tag winners. Counting down from third place, we have Claire Watson's sheep.

In second place Leanne Lunn and her cat.

And in prime position Karen Green's angry bird.

There's still another two weeks left of the competition, so please do get involved. To check the rules for entry, go here.

friday feeling

It is Friday

This must be celebrated

So please allow this to roll you headfirst into the weekend

Bonus Friday fact: This was filmed in Milton Keynes shopping centre. A proud day for MK.

hat of the week & hats for auction

Mole, rabbit or sheep. All sitting on a bed of daisies, all pretty adorable in their own special way, but which will win in the battle for the grassy knoll? Can the mole burrow to the highest heights, the rabbit leap higher, or the sheep finally lead the way? The choice is yours - just go to our facebook to vote.

Making a mountain out of a mole hill.



Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.

Counting sheep

In a big knit special these hats, and one of the owls from a prior hat of the week, are now up for auction on ebay to try to raise even more money for Age UK. Please take a look here to bid.



In last week's battle of weird vs weirder, Mr Potato Head came out on top, and even with all of his face parts. Well done to Angela.

free lunch

This Friday Tristram Stuart, the lovely ladies from A Taste Of Freedom and a few helpers are making lunch for 5000 people, and you're all invited. 

 

Highlighting the ridiculousness of food waste, they'll be cooking up a storm with fresh ingredients that would have otherwise been thrown away. So expect wonky carrots, misshapen potatoes and other surplus yet still delicious veg aplenty.

If the photos from last year are anything to go by, it's well worth a visit to watch all of this

be abracadabra-ed onto plates like this

and into waiting mouths like this

 

You'll have to be quick though, it's first come first fed.

We've also got a little project on the go to try and do good with unwanted fruit. It's called taste not waste and you can read all about it and watch a video of Rich on a bike powering a blender here.

Clover's gone all 'big knit'

As the wintry weather* creeps in, our Clover's decided to adopt a 'big knit' style wardrobe

Clover, we're sure you'd make our Nan(s) proud

*We've no idea how she survived 'up north'

hat tagging explained

So what is this hat tagging all about? Hat tagging is when you take a picture of a friend, colleague, pet, landmark (well, pretty much anything as long as it isn't rude) but with one of our big knit hats between your camera and your subject, so it looks like they're wearing it. Here's a set of helpful instructions on how to hat tag.

1 - buy an innocent smoothie with a hat on it.
2 - get a camera (old school or nu skool will do).
3 - hold the hat between your camera and your subject (in this case, little Jimmy) then take the snap. Do not put the hat on to your subject, or we won't be able to accept it into the competition (note, you can submit pictures of your animals, as long as they fit this rule).
4 - keep it real, these can look a little messy, and you can leave your fingers in the picture.
5 - go to our big knit tab on facebook and upload your masterpiece.

Remember, if the picture does not fit these rules, we will remove it from the competition. Happy snapping and tagging.

extreme camping - would you rather?

Would you rather camp in a nice field surrounded by rolling hills and ponies or half way up a rock face?