fingers and toes

That’s not a typo. You may have heard of guerilla knitting; perhaps even on this very blog. But have you heard of gorilla knitting?

I thought not.

On Sunday I was invited to join a group of people teaching knitting by the gorilla enclosure at the London Zoo. Sadly this did not involve teaching gorillas to knit. In fact it did not entail teaching anyone to knit, as they were all far more interested in the gorillas. So we sat and knitted blanket squares for shivering Afghan children instead.

One of the highlights of the day was when the keeper gave a gorilla a piece of Tina’s knitting to play with.

Unfortunately at first she didn’t think much of it:

But we arrived back from lunch to this:

We decided that ripping it in half was a sign the gorillas liked it.

Near the end of the day we got to explore the rest of the zoo, which was great as although I live practically next door to it I’ve only looked in from outside before. To be honest it’s quite a small zoo and I’m not sure how I feel about keeping animals in those conditions. But it’s also the world’s first zoo, with animals brought there and studied by Darwin among others, so has a lot of historical significance. The zoo also does some great conservation work in the wild.

We also found the Guy the Gorilla statue and made sure he won’t get so cold the next time it snows: