there really is no-one quite like grandma...

 
You may have heard by now that we here at innocent have just released a charity single to support this years Big Knit... hoorah I hear you cry. The innocent Big Knit choir's charity single "There's no-one quite like Grandma" is NOW available on iTunes. It's a meer 79p (the price of 2 apples or half a sandwich) and all of the money raised will go to the Big Knit charities, Age Concern and Help the Aged.

Download your copy from iTunes today (and maybe one for your nan to). We are of course gunning for that Christmas No.1 spot - giving Simon Cowell a run for his money - so every download counts.

You can also watch the music video below, with the very lovely June Whitfield and Age Concern Camden's infamous, Carmen, Beryl and Jeane.

We had a quite a day when the actual, real life choir came to visit us in Fruit Towers this weeks - fresh from a live performance in London's Regents Park. There was a lot of excitement, especially for those of us who remebered St Winifred's School Choir the first time around.

 
Don't they all look lovely in their pink cardigans? So please get involved and buy your single now, think of it as an early Christmas present from you to Age Concern and Help the Aged.

whoa, whoa, whoa, it's magic

This is Ollie. He came to visit us last Friday. He's like an understated version of Gambit from X-Men. 

 

Ollie is a confidence trickster. An illusionist. A bloke that's good with rabbits. A magician. You know, cards and stuff. No rabbits though. Bit disappointing. But cards are pretty cool. Especially when they go jumping all over the place in front of your eyes without actually appearing to move at all. Most of the time they're just still. But they're jumpy creatures, cards - one click of a finger and the jack of spades has shot out from under the bottom of the deck, zapped itself through some invisible vortex (the same one missing socks end up in?) to find itself residing, casual as you like, in your back pocket, paper in one hand, cup of tea in the other, wondering what took you so long to find it.

And all you can do is go 'whoa, that is chicken oriental' and look around to others for confirmation that they too missed the invisible vortex, the unseen card and sock carrying highway, to check that you are not the only one who feels like an eight year old again - giddy with excitement because something strange and cool is happening that you don't understand.

It's all way beyond us. But then, so is the tube on a Monday morning. Ollie, however, sees the vortex highway. Actually, he is its traffic controller, ushering card after card up and down it at his making. He's not seen our socks though (where's the practical application of your skills man, we ask?)

Check him out making us go 'whoa' (and before you ask, no, it's not fake).

hat of the week...

It's 'hat time of the week again (see what we did there?)

Time for the brilliant hat of the week, where you get choose the creme of a crop of our favourite creative little hats.

This week the creative knitters are merriwen2009 (Green Monster) and urban loiterer (Beardy man).

Monster Face

  
 Beard Face

We're having a couple of issues with our clever survey making thingy at the moment so this week's voting is the old school way.

To let us know which hat you think deserves to win 'Hat of the Week', please leave a comment to this post.

Then we'll tally up the votes and announce the winner next week.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Survey Tool Making Thing.

hats of the week

This week's hat of the week vote is between Homer and Dennis the Menace, a cartoon special. Go and cast your own vote on which you consider to be worthy of this week's hat of the week accolade.

Our big knit hats are now in Sainsbury's stores up and down the country. Once you've found a hat you like you can add it to our flickr group or tweet us a picture and we'll give prizes to the best in a few weeks.

your face here

Here's the thing.

You hire great people. They work really hard. They get promoted. And then you need even more great people to come and fill their shoes.

It's what HR types call a circle of win win.

And that's the sort of situation we're in right now.

Thanks to a recent spate of promotions, we've looking for some sparky, on-the-ball types to come and join our sales team as commercial account executives.

With a catchy title like that, ideally we're after people who are looking for their second sales job. Whether that's a year's work placement somewhere or experience working as part of a crack core FMCG 'I-don't-eat-lunch' team, if you're into sales and fancy a new challenge, then this role might be right up your street.

 

There's more information on the role right here. Deadline for applications in Monday 22nd November and you'll need to be available for an assessment centres the first week of December.

And who knows?

Next year you too could end up in aspirational motivational posters just like this one.

 

 

learn something new everyday

We found a new website yesterday, called learn something new everyday. It's nice and colourful, and does exactly what it says on the tin. Here's a few of our favourite learnings from the archives...

 

 

 

So why not act like a four year old and go learn some interesting new stuff.

drumroll please, it's hat of the week...

Sorry for the delay, the dog ate my computer. So, it was a stunningly close Big Knit hat of the week last week.

The creatively titled competitiors were "the flower that looks a bit like a lion", aka Dandelion (geddit? DandeLION?), and, an oldy but a goody, the Christmas pud, aka "51 days to go". Dandelion took an amazing 56.46% of the vote, with "51 days to go" finishing a brave second.

Congratulations Bev from Derby, you did a spectacuraarrrrr job. A case of smoothies will be winging themselves to you.

 

the lonely little coin counter

The team that counts together stays together.

Or something like that.

Back in August, Joe gave a little insight into the world of the finance team here at innocent

 

A few months ago, James (our Finance Director) entered his team for the Accountancy Age Awards (the Oscars of number crunching) and excitingly, they've been shortlisted for the Finance Team of the Year. The awards are next week so we'll keep you posted on how they do.

Meantime, here's a picture of the whole team together, one big happy abacus loving family

 
Except there's one member of the Finance team who is not in this picture.

Who never gets invited to lunch, never gets asked their opinion on the latest budget and never gets any desk toys or email forwards whatsoever despite being integral to the running of the business.

All this team member gets to do is to sit in a lonely part of the office, with nothing but a filing cabinet, unhung picture and a few random trays to chat to.

 
Occasionally Ryan remembers this neglected team member, comes along and gets him out his box.

 

Spend some time with him, chucks a few coins his way and makes him feel such a part of the team again that his little face lights up in green LED joy.

 

But then it's back in the box, back on top of the filing cabinet and forgotten about until the next time petty cash needs counting.

He's hired a tux especially for next week's award bash.

Fingers crossed they'll remember to take him along.
 
 
 
 

and they all lived happily ever after

Our big game of consequences is now in it's last 24 hours. If you want to write the very end line to any of the 26 stories just pop over to our consequences website, pick any letter, catch up on the story so far, and bring it to a happy ending. Then just wait until 4pm tomorrow (Thursday 12th Nov) to see if your line was chosen as the winner on any of the letters.

3 free fridge magnet versions of each letter are still available in all of our kids smoothie multi-packs in the shops now. They'll be collectors editions soon so an eye out for them.

thoughtful by name, thoughtful by nature

Our friends from Thoughtful really are very thoughtful. Very thoughtful indeed.

It was a cold, rainy London day when I received a call from the lovely James (pictured above, on the right). He wanted to know if it was ok if he organised a knitathon in aid of the Big Knit. I thought about it for about 12 seconds and replied "Well of course it is. That indeed would be very, very thoughtful".

A few phonecalls and a delivery of all the neccessary knitathon bits and bobs later, the Sainsbury's Romiley Thoughtful Knitathon was born.

They knitted and chatted and knitted for a whole 16 hours and managed to knit well over 100 hats. We just wanted to say an enormous thank you to everyone who took part.

Thank you, Thoughtful. We love you a bit.