The Big Knit is back!

For those of you who don't know:
What is the Big Knit?

For the Big Knit, Age UK and innocent (smoothies) ask knitters of all ages to get creative and come up with their own designs for mini-woolly hats to be placed on top of their smoothie bottles and sold in Boots and Sainsbury's stores throughout November. For each hatted bottle sold, 25p is donated to Age UK to help make winter warmer for older people across the UK.

So every year knitters all over the UK get knitting to produce thousands of these little bottle hats. And the creativity and diversity of the hats produced is never-ending.

Give it a go! The patterns can be found on the bottom of this innocent page.

Please send all knitted hats by 1st October to
Age UK Oxfordshire, St Edmund House, 39 West St Helen Street, Abingdon OX14 5BT.

Here are some fruity Big Knit hats I made a couple of years ago.

Strawberry hat

Unusually, I haven't knitted at all for the last couple of months or so. I am glad to have started again. September usually heralds the first knitting preparations for Christmas.

Here is a little strawberry hat (first size), which I made for the grand-daughter of a friend. I wrote the pattern several years ago and it can easily be adapted for a variety of other fruit or veg (tomato, aubergine, apple, pumpkin etc).

My next project is already on the needles: hubby's Christmas socks (by now a firm tradition)

Another foodie project ...

... this time a fruit and veg theme.

With little else to knit during the summer I am knitting a collection of fruit and vegetables for our harvest festival.

The patterns are picked from various patterns on ravelry, and so far I am very pleased with how realistic they look!

I am hoping to ask people to help themselves to a knitted piece of fruit or veg, with any donations given to charity.

Blue tits and the dreaded gooseberry sawfly ...

The dreaded gooseberry sawfly, which took a liking to our gooseberry and white current bushes last year, has come back for more ...
Raising two ot three generations during the summer, they can defoliate the entire plant, leaving only the leaf veins and stalks. Although they look like small caterpillars, they develop into a non-stinging wasp-like fly.
So I have started checking daily and picking the green larvae off by hand.


Luckily our resident blue tits are now raising their chicks, and they have discovered this perfect food source so close to their home. So I have a couple of eager helpers!

Here are some pictures of the blue tit parents flying in and out of the nest box. They are taken from my son's bedroom widow. Not the best quality, but you get the idea ...
(I especially like the blurry shape of the bird flying off!)