The Big Knit

Everybody will be familiar with the Innocent Big Knit by now.

Every year thousands of little woolly hats are made and sent in to be placed on smoothie bottles. For each hat-wearing smoothie sold 25p is donated to AgeUK.

These are some of my hats for this year...

They are easy enough to make, but the tricky part is wrestling these perfect pigeon-sized hats away from fashion-conscious birds...

This year Innocent have extended the deadline to allow more folks to send in little woolly hats 'til FRIDAY 29th OCTOBER, so get knitting!

Happy Bird-day, Mr. Pigeon!

Well, it's been a while since the last update, but I couldn't not acknowledge Mr.P's special day.

Although the original Mr.Pigeon was created one July three years ago, Mr. Pigeon 007, the face of the Pigeon Loft, was born at the end of September, so it was only right to throw him a little party...and what's a party without a cake?

The birthday bird enjoyed his specially made pigeon-sized victoria sponge

...and there were plenty of tiny sparkly cupcakes for the guests.

They sang 'Happy Bird-day' to Mr. P...

...as he blew out the candle on his cake.

HAPPY 3rd BIRTHDAY, MR PIGEON!

For those waiting patiently for pigeons of their own, there are more little birdies in the works. I'm afraid all the related documents are on my old laptop, which takes 2 hours at least to open one file, so their release will be delayed until all the jumper patterns and passports have been recreated on Mac-friendly software :-)

Mr.P on TV

Finally! An update!

Mr.Pigeon was very excited tonight. Back in November I took him (along with Mr.P 056 in his box, a little hen and a range of Pigeon Loft and Pigeon Press products) to Manchester to present my case to appear on "High Street Dreams", a new BBC show about helping people with products to develop them for the high street. The team loved Mr.P, but he wasn't selected to appear on the programme, which is perhaps lucky because it looks like hard work and the past few months have been jam-packed enough as it is!

Anyway, I was very surprised upon tuning in tonight to find this in the first few minutes of the show...

(if you've ever wondered what my hands and elbows look like you're in for a treat!)

Mr.P 056's passport

...and a carrier pigeon bag!

I just hope that television stardom doesn't go to his head.

If you're in the UK you can watch High Street Dreams on iPlayer. It's very good.

Mr. Pigeon meets his idols

After an hour and a half standing in the cold outside Waterstones in Nottingham, Mr. Pigeon finally got to meet his food heroes - The Hairy Bikers!

...though it looks like it's a good job I was there to save him from becoming pigeon pie.

Their new book is all about family recipes handed down through the generations, so I thought I'd hand my own recipe (i.e. the only recipe in my folder which I haven't taken from some book or other) down to you to try. It's very easy and very tasty. Just click on the picture to make it bigger...or if that fails, e-mail me for a printable copy:

Finally, I apologise for not updating more frequently. The Pigeon Loft is being (very slowly) re-branded and I'm working (with the help of a very patient and clever friend) on a proper website, which will be Mr.P's online home. Hopefully it will include this blog, more pigeon adventures, colouring sheets, recipes, tutorials etc. If you'd like to request anything to be included in this new site, I'd be very glad to hear your ideas!