The Big Knit at Ballington House

Over the past few weeks the women at Ballington House the female mental health service in Leek, Staffordshire have been busy knitting little woolly hats to put on the top of Innocent Smoothie bottles to help raise money for Age UK.

Each year as many as 25,000 older people's lives are at risk because of the cold and Innocent Smoothies wanted to help. The Big Knit was an idea they had back in 2003 where they asked people both young and old to knit little woolly hats to put on top of their smoothie bottles and for each one sold they would donate 25p to Age UK. The idea snowballed and before they knew it the people of the UK had knitted 5 million hats and to date they have raised over £1.7 million for Age UK along with generating awareness of the great work done by the charity.

The money raised from The Big Knit goes towards helping older people keep warm through the winter providing things like blankets, warm meals, emergency heaters, winter warmth packs and days at Age UK centres where older people can enjoy a hot lunch, activities and the chance to meet new friends.

The knitting needles have been busy at Ballington with 34 little hats made by the women. A fantastic achievement as none of them had even picked up a knitting needle before starting the project!

Everyone who has been involved in The Big Knit at Ballington House has thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and even those who haven’t actually knitted have been involved by making the pop poms to decorate the top of the hats.

The hats that have been made have now been sent to Innocent Smoothies to join the other 69,8012 hats that have been knitted so far this year and will feature on bottles in the shops from February 2016.

Now that the little woolly hats have been sent off to Innocent Towers HQ the knitting hasn’t stopped. Inspired by their new found skill and love of knitting some of the women have already starting thinking about what else they can make now and have come up with lots of ideas as to what they can do. We look forward to seeing what else they have knitted over the coming months!

You can find more information about The Innocent Big Knit here http://www.thebigknit.co.uk/