Chaffy and his 'Innocent' hat

Chaffy is a little rabbit who has one ear shorter than the other because he lost half of it in a lawnmower accident. You can't see this though because he has a little woolly hat on.

Now for some context for today's blip. Chaffy is a character who features in Find Chaffy and Chaffy Now, children's activity books published by the company I work for. The woolly hat is from an Innocent smoothie bottle I bought last winter, designed to encourage daft people like me to buy their smoothies because of the cute little hats. The reason I've chosen Chaffy and his hat is because I was at home at the weekend visiting my parents and my Nanny. She was showing me one of her latest sewing projects which a colleague at the local charity shop had convinced her to get involved with. It turns out this project is knitting little hats to go on the top of smoothie bottles for Sainsbury's, such as the one above. Apparently, Sainsbury's donate 25p for every hat given to Age Concern, or in the case of my Nanny's hats, the local charity their shop raises money for. In my naivety or cynicism (I haven't decided which), I'd presume these were machine-made but evidently not!

I?m not quite sure how I feel about this, part of me feels it?s exploiting the poor old ladies in charity shops (although I?m sure people of any age can knit the hats) but equally it gives my Nanny an entertaining project (although she?s currently fretting over her bobble quality) and the two of us a giggle that I may end up buying one of her hats!

So, next time you buy an Innocent smoothie from Sainsbury?s with a hat on, think of my Nanny who I?m trying to convince to knit a hat for her meerkat, (the ones from comparethemarket.com) who sits outside her front door, so he doesn?t get cold in winter.