Help innocent help old people

In the UK, 1 in 10 people over the age of 65 are malnourished. If you'd like to help, smoothie maker innocent is joining forces with with supermarket group Sainsbury’s to raise over £250,000 to support charities Age Concern and Help the Aged with healthy eating and healthy living projects during the winter.

They want as many people as possible to knit 'bottle hats'. For every behatted smoothie sold, innocent and Sainsbury’s will give 35p to Age Concern and Help the Aged. The monies raised will then be used to fund projects and advice centres offering information on healthy eating as well as cooking clubs and get-togethers where older people can sit down and enjoy a meal and company.

>> For knitting tips, patterns and pictures go to http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/thebigknit/?Page=how_to_knit

And when you’re done knitting, just send finished hats to:

The innocent Big Knit, Fruit Towers, 1 The Goldhawk Estate, Brackenbury Road, London W6 0BA, including your name, address and number of hats you've knitted.

Calling all Knitters and would be knitters

Join Make it and Mend it's Twitter / Knitter fest and celebrate World Wide Knit in Public day!
Kick off Thursday 4.00pm (GMT)
Make it and Mend it are holding an Twitter/Knitter fest for anybody who is interested in knitting. It is a chance to come together and meet other like minded tweeters to share ideas and inspiration.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a complete novice, a passionate aficionado, or even a wool producer – all are welcome to join us for 2 hours of unadulterated knitting tweets.
What is WWKIP?
For those of you who may have missed the massed hoards of knitters down on the South Bank in London on Saturday. This weekend was World Wide Knit in Public Day (WWKIP).
Started in 2005 by Danielle Landes, WWKIP Day began as a way for knitters to come together and enjoy each other’s company. For many, knitting can be a very solitary experience and Landes decided to rectify this by encouraging people to grab their knitting, get out of their houses and go to a local event where people can meet other like minded people.

WWKiP Day is unique, in that it's the largest knitter-run event in the world. Each local event is put together by a volunteer or a group of volunteers. They each organize an event because they want to, not because they have to.

WWKIP is about showing the general public that ‘not only grannies knit!’. Knitting crosses all ages, classes, cultures and getting together to knit is also about sharing all that knowledge and inspiring each other.

This year the event runs over two weekends. Last weekend was the first and 20th/21st June is the second weekend. So you still have time to grab your needles and join in.

Landes says “WWKiP Day is really about showing the general public that knitting can be a community activity in a very distinct way. In some places there are many different knitting groups that never interact with each other, on WWKiP Day they come together in one place, making them hard to miss.”

Here at Make it and Mend it, we love this idea and have decided it is time to bring it into the digital age. Coming together to share our knitting, doesn’t have to just be a physical coming together, it can be a virtual coming together as well. Everyday our Twitter followers come together to share thoughts, ideas and experiences, for 2 hours on Thursday we want you to join us in our twitter/knitter fest and bring WWKIP online.

“Better living through stitching together”

How Meryl knits her way into the zone

On BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, Meryl Streep recently talked about getting prepared for inhabiting the characters she portrays in her films, and likened some of her scenes in her latest film, Doubt, as being akin to "gladiatorial combat".

When asked if she prepared, as the film's director has claimed, by "getting in the zone" like an athelete, Meryl replied almost indignantly that she looked at it as "so not sport" and declared that she spent all her time on set knitting. In fact she claimed to have taught her co-star Amy Adams, to knit and even knitted the shawl she wears in the film.

The knitting helped Meryl get into the role she was playing: "For me it was a place to gather my thoughts and understand the contemplative (life)". She went on to say "It's a sort of clearing out place".

Meryl Streep is not alone in seeing knitting as a road to contemplation and a way of keeping calm and grounded. It is not just a way to get into a role , but has other great beneficial effects - read our resident psychologist, Hilary Bruffel's piece on our Make it and Mend it website on how knitting can help cure depression.