the happy carriage

Ade's been talking to our Ceri (pictured above behind the glass) and he's had a great idea.

I'm in. Let me know when they say yes.

Anyone else?

Update: Ade's idea got turned down, find out why here. Oh well, at least he tried.

professional help

It's been great to see so many businesses getting invloved with our Big Knit project this year along with the individual knitters.

A couple of examples I've just come across are the kind people at Zoppa who have been lending a hand and some folk from the National Museums of Liverpool who've created a very colourful little slide show here (excuse the beer, it's a Friday though).

And then there are our friends at Sainsbury's who along with exclusively selling our smoothies with hats this winter have been rolling their sleeves up and helping to knit them to.

From left to right Jo Waller, Hazel Glover, Julie Wilby, Sue Leather , Martin Jackson and Front Sue Mellows Facer.

This is Sainsbury's Guisborough who have hand knitted 1700 hats alone.

It's been really motivating to see so many people joining in, young and old, business and seasoned knitter, Andrew and Margaret (and Marie of course).

We just need to keep an eye on that hatometer now.

hat trick

Although your little wooly hats are pouring in from far and wide, it's still looking pretty close to call as to whether or not we're going to smash our target.

The deadline to get your hats to us is this Monday 22nd October, so make sure you get those needles knitting, parcels packaged and stamps licked/stuck this weekend.

Only 8946 table football teams' worth of hats to go...

up close and personal with fruit

See if you can watch this for more than 60 seconds without smiling.

(We didn't make it ourselves so can't vouch for all the facts and figures within it, especially the claims about pineapple being good on pizza with ham).

bonny cheese

Each month, we have Cheese Club, where we eat lots of cheese, vote on our favourites and then put them head to head in the Cheese Off in December. It's a bit like Pop Idol; just with cheese and minus all that blubbing.

This month's theme was Cheeses of Scotland, hosted by two of our favourite Scots, Kelly and Andrew D.

Pride of Scotland

As well as thistles, Proclaimers songs and the odd photo of Lorraine Kelly, there were authentic Scottish hats...

See-you-Jimmy hat fight

Some serious cheese lovers...

Go ben i thee skullery n git mi thi pickle (please can I have some chutney?)

And some excellent cheese.

The winning cheese was Inverawe Smoked Cheddar. It's the orange one, incase you were wondering.

Hats off to the McKerrow clan (a.k.a Kelly's mum and dad, Anne and David) for sending us the thistles and some of Scotland's finest oatcakes and shortbread.

We only have one more Cheese Club to go before the Grand Cheese Off 2007; watch this space.

more royal news

After Prince Andrew's visit on Monday we gave him a few hat design cards to take away. And what do you know? He gave them to Sarah (the Duchess of York) and their daughters Beatrice and Eugenie, who have sent us their designs. Witness their work below.

And here's a story about Margaret (star of our Big Knit film) trying to get the prince to wear her hat, an offer that he politely declined.

a royal visit

We had a special visitor at Fruit Towers yesterday. Prince Andrew came in to see what we do, and he had a good old wander round the place, talking to people, learning the art of making a proper smoothie and politely declining to wear a large woolly hat. Here are some pictures from the visit:

Little hats, by royal appointment.

Lucy puts on her best "I'm 2 feet away from an actual prince" face.

"And this is a tree."

Jess puts the stare on HRH.

"...and then I dropped the crown and my mum grounded me for three weeks."

innocent in the alps

We're about to start selling drinks in Austria. Well, when we say 'about to', it's sort of looking like this...

We're starting off in beautiful Salzburg...

...where Eau de Mozart is available for under 15 Euros...

...and our Jess is getting to grips with the whole not-being-in-the-UK thing...

...from the comfort of her B&B, currently doubling as the launch office.

Jess has helped launch innocent all over Europe and, with the help of local boy Franz, will be storming the Alps in the coming months. Maybe you could help too...

• If you fancy working for us in Austria, check the jobs on the website.
• If you're in Austria or Switzerland and want us to let you know where you can buy our drinks, e-mail Jess.
• She also says that she is a bit lonely, so all messages of goodwill are most welcome. 

running total

As much as we've been getting really into new technologies this year (like our blog, and youtube and flickr and virtual badges and hatometeres*) we still love the old stuff. Like pinboards.

Here's our Big Knit running total pinboard, it allows us to do very clever things like use upside down 9's as 6's and vice versa. Plus it's got our first ever glow in the dark hat pinned to it. I tried to capture the glow in the dark effect in motion but didn't do very well.

We can assure you it works though. It uses glow in the dark wool.

Seeing as we're talking about totals Big Knit Charlotte has asked me to let you know that our deadline to get hats to us is next Monday (October 22nd). You can find out where to post them at the bottom of this page. Hopefully the post has sorted itself out now and we'll be back on course to swap a few 9's and 6's about and top up our hatometer.

Good stuff.

*OK we're not Silicon Valley yet but we're having a good go at keeping up with the kids.

save our vegetables

The world's vegetables need your help. Traditional varieties are dying out, but never fear – you can save them. Simply adopt a vegetable at the Heritage Seed Library.

We've adopted a tomato called Texas Wild. Something about the name just made us think of cowboys and riding off into the sunset. But please don't let this be your motivation for adopting a rare variety. There aren't that many cowboy-themed veg varieties on the list.

You could choose the Walla Walla Sweet (onion), the Long Green Buddha (pepper) or the Lazy Housewife (climbing French bean). At £15, it's a snip.