with a little help from your friends

Help. We all need it. The Beatles knew it and I’m sure you know it too. You probably also know all about The Big Knit by now, but in case you don’t, we’ve got a fancy website to get you up to speed.

Here at Fruit Towers, we think that helping is pretty important in The Big Knit. We’re asking lots of knitters to help us knit little hats for our smoothie bottles, and we’re making little packs to help friends get together for knitting parties.

Knitting Bee Deborah is one of the knitters who has planned to help us reach our target this year and she’s asked her friends to help her. Deborah has set up a pledge to encourage others to help her knit some hats this year. She’s agreed to get her needles out and make at least 5 dinky hats this year, but only if 35 others also agree to knit at least 1 hat each.

So if you’re thinking of knitting some little hats for us this year, and need a little help from your friends, create your own pledge, make a Scout’s honour to keep to it, and post the details in the comments section below. 

vegetable models

More fete stuff (don't worry, summer will soon be over and we'll find something else to talk about) for you to see. This time, it's slightly better than the traditional and some would say staid carrots-and-beans. Oh yes. This time we have actual models of things made out of fruit and veg. Check them out and then try to make them at home. Go on.

it's amazing what you can do with some tomatoes, blueberries and a permanent marker. oh, and fake eyes.

an ancient sea creature, forged from a peach and some other summer fruits.

Thank you to our Lucinda for providing photos of these fine exhibits, which she found at the Hawkesbury Show.

the famous watercress beds of ewelme

I went to a fete at the weekend, in the village of Ewelme in Oxfordshire. As ever, the best thing about the fete was the excellent prize winning veg. Here are the best carrots and the best runner beans.

the best carrots in both the 'short' and 'long' classes

lots of beans

Ewelme is famous for its watercress beds, although there was no watercress on show in the championship marquee. Shame.

jim demetriou - a tribute

We don't have time to talk about the people in masks and capes, but we do want to let you know a little more about the man who isn't wearing a mask or a cape.

His name is Jim Demetriou and he was one of the first people to ever sell our drinks, via his company JD Foods. When we started out, Jim was pretty much the first wholesaler to sell our drinks, shipping them in his nicely refrigerated vans, and delivering them to all sorts of delis and cafes and foodie places all over London and sometimes further afield.

Indeed, this author remembers the regular Friday afternoon drive to visit Jim in Tottenham, where we'd settle that week's accounts (which involved Jim giving us a few quid) and talk about the weekend and other important things.

Without good people like Jim we wouldn't have got our business off the ground, so we were honoured when he popped into Fruit Towers this week, for the first time ever. It seemed like the circle was complete; like when the ghost of Yoda turns up by the campfire at the end of Return of the Jedi. A special moment. Thank you Jim.

But where did the moustache go?

our new paris office

Our new Paris office was officially opened this week. Philippe (the boss) wore a silly hat and cut the ceremonial innocent bunting, which is how things are done in France. The office is in this nice courtyard, where the gnomes roam free:

Our Emilie in Paris says "It is beautiful and high ceilinged, spacious, in a grand Parisian building. We have so many rooms we are getting lost inside and might need to invest in microphones to avoid yelling at each other across the office. We miss our old concierge Maria but apart from that it’s really much better than the old place."

how to split a log with Ade from howies

Back in June we went to a very interesting conference called 'interesting 2007' that we told you about here. Our friend Ade from howies gave a great 3-minute talk on how to split a log properly. Living in the city you can sometimes lose touch with such skills so it's nice to get a reminder every now and again. Over to Ade (after a short introduction by Johnnie)...

If you liked that there are more interesting things here. We also liked this one about doing things you're good at.

a dancing grass van, doing some dancing

A short film featuring one of our Dancing Grass Vans on a recent trip to Denmark. These vans don't dance that much anymore (the hydraulics are temperamental and possibly a little unsafe) so treasure this moment.

the heat is on

Mark Frith (Chief Editor at heat magazine) must have been to a good selection posh parties and rubbed shoulders with a few stars this summer so we were pleasantly surprised when we saw he named our village fete as his favourite highlight of the summer so far.

After the pinnacles of this and our mention in Grazia magazine our Claire (who looks after all things press like) is having a bit off time off now. She's gone to have a little baby actually, but she can have it knowing that she helped us to get into two of the Nation's grandest magazines.

getting ugly

one of the winners

Our friends at Method brought some ugliness to our big fete. Specifically, they created a “gurning against dirty” booth, which linked their friendly cleaning stuff to people pulling ugly faces (in a good way). You can see one of the winners above.

Check out more gurners at their gurning flickr group and if you're new to gurning, read more about it on Wikipedia.

miaow

You may have noticed that now and again we like to make sure our drinkers are on their toes and paying attention by slipping in the odd unlikely ingredient to the list.

Shiny trumpets, two-man tents and rubber ducks have all been known to have made an appearance at some point.

But we were still shocked to receive a concerned email from Rhian about a new entrant:

While drinking my delicious innocent breakfast thickie this morning, I was most alarmed to read that the ingredients included 'a sprinkling of ground up cats'.

Thankfully I am not a vegetarian, but do not usually eat any cat until after lunch as it plays havoc with my digestive system. I would be most grateful if you revise your recipe as I'd hate to give them up. Surely there is something else you can use to give it similar bite?

We are happy to inform Rhian that this particular label appears to have been the victim a printing slip-up, and not an attempt on our part at introducing exciting new ingredients into the world of quality fruit drinks. It should of course read 'a sprinkling of ground up oats'. Of course.

And we'd like to take this opportunity to say that our drinks have been cat-free since we launched. We plan on maintaining this stance for the foreseeable future.