Lauren O'Farrell

Author, traveller and giant squid wrestler, Lauren began her plans for world domination through a weaving of words and wool during a rather nasty three-year battle with cancer. She emerged from treatment victorious, slightly radioactive and unsettlingly ambitious.

In December 2005 she co-founded the UK's woolly Godzilla of a knitting group, Stitch London, which she turned into a full-time job and still runs today as Head Woolly Godzilla Wrangler (official title).

She is also rumoured to be sneaky stitching graffiti knitter Deadly Knitshade, though she will neither confirm or deny this if you ask.

In 2009 she is said to have gathered London's first graffiti yarnstorming collective, Knit The City. A sneaky stitching collective famous for the Parliament Square Phonebox Cosy and various crazed graffiti knits.

Her personal knitting accomplishments include a corset for a week-old piglet, a single sock knit at both the Taj Mahal and 3500-metres up the Himalayas, and Plarchie, an 8-metre giant squid for London's Natural History Museum made from 160 plastic carrier bags.

Lauren makes her mischief at The Fleece Station, a woolly studio in Deptford's Old Police Station.

She lives in Surrey with five cats and her giant knitted squid.