oh christmas tree, oh christmas tree...

Christmas is coming, woop woop.

Christmas cards, mince pies, fairy lights, pressies, baubles and duh duh de duh the beloved Christmas tree. The centre piece to your lounge, the twinking lights, tinsel, the smell, candy canes, carpet covered in needles. Everybody loves a Christmas tree, decorating it's tear drop shape to the sound of Bing Crosby, sipping mulled wine, ,trying to figure out where on earth you put the fairy from last year, chestnuts roasting on an open fire etc etc.

 The Jardine family have created a wonderful and joyous video of their very own innocent tree dressing.

Well done for an amazing film, great production, acting and special effects.

hamsters, dogs, cats and brilliant hats

We asked you what you use your hats and warmers for once purchased from le Sainsbury's.

We really have had some beauties, including babies donning warmers for head bands and grown women, yes grown women, using the little hats as ear muffs.

We really thought we had seen it all. Then these arrived.

Oh my.

Ronan the hamster looks dashing in his hat and the pink really sets off his eyes.

Smudge the cat looks irresistable in his very "en vogue" snood. Wouldn't you agree?

And, as for these two cheekey chaps or chapesses, there really are very few words to describe their wooly look.

Very professional modelling . Stern, rigid, alert.

You can vote for favourite animal snap by leaving a comment to the blog, the winner receives a case of smoothies.

Eeek/woof/meow for now

 

the big knit: what to wear

The Big Knit has been instore now for 12 days and what a 12 days they've been.In Sainsbury's stores across the land, our smoothies, veg pots and squeezies are taking pride of woollen place on shelf.

'But what do I do with the little woolly blighters afterwards?' I hear you cry?

Well, I've found some answers by means of, mostly, head wear.

Here's Edie Prince demonstrating the latest in baby headwear fashion.

Fits like a dream

And here's Judith from Save the Children using her little hat as a cunningly disguised ear muff.

 
Good thinking, Judith but maybe you should ask Edie for a few style tips?

We'd love to see what you use your hats and warmers for so please send your pics to [email protected] and the top 5 fashion forward looks will win a case of drinks

super knitters

Kim Lathe from Sainsbury's in Bridgnorth has formed her very own knitting club or should I say, empire.

The club consists of girls from Castlefields school, ladies from hilton brooke residential home and peeking in at the back is the their mentor and Queen knitter, Kim. As you can see, they have managed to knit an astonishing 3300 little hats.

A big big thank you to you all for your amazing knitting skills and hard work.

hats, hats and marmalade the cat

Marmalade (the kitty in the photo) has a very important job. She is the "Mother of Mercy's" nursing homes' official mascot.

You can see why they chose her. Her symmetrical face, purrrrfect coat and modest glance into the camera - she is the ideal catdidate.

The talented ladies who she looks after have been click clacking away to create some of Northern Ireland's finest bobble hats -  though it's young Marmalade that seems to be stealing their thunder.

So here is a lovely picture of the real stars of the show.

Thank you to everyone that helped out and an extra special thank you to Marmalade.

Purrrrrrr.

california dreamin'

 

It turns out that even tiny people in California are taking part in the Big Knit. Just check these guys out. Tracy sent us this snap of the Busy Bee Knitting Club, from Heritage Oak Elementary School in Roseville, California. Just look at their little faces and the joy knitting has bought them. Who needs surfing when there's knitting to be done? 

Busy Bee Knitting Club, thank you, we can't wait to get your hats.

pat 'the hat' rawcliffe

 

We had some special visitors today, of the knitting variety. 

The one and only Pat Rawcliffe - owner of the magical pair of hands that knitted this year's hat of the year - popped into fruit towers today with her three lovely friends Margaret, Marjorie and Bridget. There were many fine hats sent in this year, but there was only one knitter out there with the skill, vision and downright courage to knit a Ram With a Big Left Eye hat. Pat Rawcliffe, ladies and gentlemen - breaking down knitting barriers and purling her own path to the delight of us mere mortals. What a lady.

big knit banter with beryl and jean

A few weeks ago, Meera and I went to visit Age Concern in Camden to have a chat about the big knit over some tea and knitting. You can read the blog post we made here. We've also made a little film about it. The sound quality is a little iffy, so you might want to turn the volume up on your computer, but it's worth a watch - especially if you've always wanted to see what a willy warmer looks like.

Hope you like it.

the final countdown

Surely we couldn't reach 500,000 hats. Could we?

It's been all hands on deck this week at fruit towers as we counted our little socks off to see if we could reach our target of half a million hats. Having all hands on deck was pretty useless really. The only decking we have is outside, and all the hats were inside. And there's not much decking anyway, and rather a lot of hands in fruit towers, so it was pretty cramped. It's also been raining these last few days.

But we soon realised the error of our ways and got back inside to continue the count.

This picture of our expert hat unpacker Jake is for illustrative purposes only. We'd like to asssure you that our unpacking method was far more thorough and exact than this. Which is why, at 6.09pm Grenwich Mean Time yesterday evening, when we totalled up all of our unpacking, we can reveal with absolute accuracy that we cruised beyond our target of half a million hats (we're currently on 501, 423 - and still counting).

Now, if we were American, this would likely be cause for some serious high fives, a few chest bumps and plenty of butt slaps. But we're not American. We're British. And we didn't quite know how to celebrate. So I climbed into a perspex box and got covered in hats. It seemed the sensible thing to do.

And made me rather happy.

In fact, we're all rather happy here at fruit towers. 501,423 hats really is a staggering amount. And we're so, so grateful for your incredible knitting efforts. So, for anyone who has knitted a hat, wherever you may be, please stand up now and take a bow. You've been amazing. And we love you all (or if there's more than one of you, why not try a little chest bump action?).

We'd also like to say that although we often showcase the more creative hats we've received here on our blog, please don't think that we're not just as impressed by all the other hats. We know that each and every one is a labour of love, and we're in awe of them all.

At the end of the day, every single hat we receive means 50p for Age Concern, and that's the main thing.

There's still a few packages to be unpacked here in the office, so we'd best get back to it. Think we'll all be quite sad when there's none left to unpack. It's been like Christmas every day these past few weeks...

And don't forget people, the hats will be on shelf in Sainsbury's stores around the country from 5th November, and they do tend to be snapped up pretty quickly, so get yourself down there pronto to avoid disappointment. And in doing so you'll be helping us raise £250,000 for Age Concern to help keep older people warm this winter.

Again, thank you. 

nearly there

Wow. What a week. Our poor postman's back has been feeling the strain as package upon package of knitted hats arrived daily at fruit towers.

The postman's back aside (sorry Dave - he calls the campaign The Big Nuisance by the way), it's great news for our attempt to reach our target of 500,000 hats. But if you've been keeping an eye on our hatometer today, and worrying that we've not hit our target, fear not. As you can see from the picture we've still got loads of hats to unpack, so we probably won't know what our final total figure is until next week.

Keep your eyes on this blog for more updates. And if you have any stray hats lying around at home, get them in to us quick smart.

Now then, back to those hats. 1, 2, 3, 4...