Hello – popular greeting of English speaking nations since a long long time ago. Hit song name for Christina Aguilera and Lionel Richie. Title of well known glossy magazine, celebrity sponsors and wedding crashers. And our regular greeting to you every Wednesday. Hello.

Cast your vote

Judging is all the rage these days. There doesn't seem to be a programme on the telly at the weekend which doesn't involve you phoning your vote in. So having our fingers bang on the pulse we're going to follow suit and ask you to help us judge the grand Big Knit 2007 best hat awards. There are some strong contenders in each of the four categories – Best Little Hat, Favourite Seasonal Hat, Most Creative Hat and Hat of the Year. Make your vote count here (you don't even need to pick up the phone).

Oh, and we finally made it to 400,720 hats this week. Woo hoo.

Remember remember to grow a moustache for Movember

Readers of our blog may have noticed some dodgy facial hair cropping up around Fruit Towers in the last few weeks. Other than the beards per head quota going from strength to strength, we also have a distinct growth in the upper lip area. It started like this, moved on to this and currently looks like this. And as well as being a tribute to the late great Magnum PI, the boys are suffering funny looks from people on the street in order to raise money and awareness for men’s health issues. Find out more here.

27 days until the Queen's speech

OK, so we're going to have to mention it at some point. Christmas is almost here. 27 days until the speech, 28 days until the dark meat gets an airing, and 29 days until you can say goodbye to Uncle Roger and his ‘party tricks’. To get you all festive and in the mood have a listen to " an innocent take on Jingle Bells" by Kim Møller . Kim joined our new FaceBook group last week and has been lightning fast to leave his mark on our wall with a link to a very inventive little tune. We've turned it into a youtube clip for your listening pleasure here. Listen closely, as there are some proper lyrical gems to discover.

And finally...

Hello. Does anyone have a cure for the following? Runny noses? Wet shoes? Burnt toast? If so, please send them to the usual address. We need them real bad.

The mighty Amazon

There's an interesting article about our acai berries in last Sunday's Observer Food Monthly (read it here). If you can't be bothered to read it, here's a brief summary - all of the acai berries that we use in our smoothies are grown sustainably from palms native to the Amazon estuary. These palms only grow within 25 yards of the Amazon in the mineral-rich tidal wetlands, meaning that they're naturally irrigated twice a day. What's more, our acai supplier is certified as organic, and is working with the acai collectors to preserve biodiversity and address social issues such as adequate nutrition. Of course, the berries themselves contain "60 per cent more antioxidants than the acclaimed pomegranate, 2.7 times more than blueberries and over six times more than strawberries". But I'd read the article if I were you - lots more good stuff contained within.

Facebooking up and down the block

We're sure you know all about facebook. It's a place where you can meet people who you already know, post photos of your dog doing magic tricks and invent interesting facts about your life to make yourself more attractive to others. Naturally, we are big fans. So we now have our own facebook page, complete with information, photos and enthralling status updates such as 'making tea with a teabag'. If you'd like to have a look, please visit our page and become a friend.

Lots and lots of trees

We broke through our Buy One Get One Tree target a few days ago. Woo hoo. That means we've planted over 100,000 trees (125,415 at the last count) - over 200 football pitches' worth of tall things with leaves, enabling us to support all of the planned community tree planting schemes in Africa and India. Joanne and Gavin were the one-hundred thousandth registrants at around midday last Wednesday, and will be receiving a little something to mark the occasion. And thank you to everyone else whose registered a tree so far. We're extending the deadline up until 10th December, so every tree over the original 100,000 will also be planted and cared for in India or Africa.

If you have any suggestions for how we can make this project work even better next time, add your comment to this blog post.

No time for losers

Here are the winners of lots of drinks from last week's news, who correctly identified the celebrity hats - David C, Anna J, Brendan M, Carl W, Lynne S, Tim S, Sara B, Matt S, Mark H and Mark L. Well done everyone.

And finally...

Hello and welcome to the news. This week the view from the window is sprightly. Leaves all over the place, a bit of frost hovering. Whenever that happens, we like to call it ’sprightly’. Shall we get on with it now?

Getting famous

What’s not to like about celebrities? Some of them are on telly, some sing songs and some of them blow their fortunes on a series of ornate ponds for their beloved Koi carp. We were very lucky this year to find some who have designed hats for the Big Knit. Russell Brand’s done one, as have Joanna Lumley, Fearne Cotton, Denise Van Outen and Chris Tarrant. In fact, if you’d like to join in a little game, you can guess who knitted what right here – ten lucky winners will receive a case of our new monthly recipe and perhaps a night out with Tarrant/Van Outen if we can sort it*. Good luck.

More knitting news

Anthony is in charge of the whole Big Knit thing. Every week he is very firm with us, and tells us exactly what we should be telling folks about our little knitting fiesta. This week he has two main points. 1) The hats are on the shelves in Sainsbury's. They won’t be there for very long, so get them while you can. 2) Once you’ve got your hats, take photos of them and upload to the flickr group for three separate chances to win a year's supply of smoothies.

You have been told.

An early Christmas jingle

One of our favourite shopkeepers is Steve at Sundae Sundae in Whitstable. Steve and his band, The Trouser Trumpets, are attempting to storm the charts this year with their Christmas single ‘Every Day Is Xmas Day With You’. As Steve and co say themselves, “with the help of all you trumpeteers we hope to dent the over inflated egos of manufactured pop impresarios by storming the new download charts, thus becoming over inflated manufactured pop impresarios ourselves...download your copy and lose Simon Cowell that beach house he's building on the moon right now.” Absolutely. Listen to it here and dent Cowell’s lunar ambitions. Go on.

And finally...

* could be tricky

Hello. This week we begin the search for some bright young things who can design our packaging for us. And we also feature an angry man with banana storage issues.

A call for very young designers

We have a competition to tell you about. We want kids to design our packaging, and the best designs will end up being used in real life – in the shops and everything. Quite exciting. As you might know, we quite like putting different stuff on the back of the kids smoothie packs, to keep the young ones entertained (and sometimes even educated). But we figure that as a bunch of old people, we should let the kids have a go themselves. There are four age categories (under 8's, 9-11, 12-14, 15-16), with the very best design from each age group appearing on our packs in spring/summer 2008. Woo hoo. And five runners up from each category will receive a year’s supply of smoothies and a visit to their school by our DGV to hand out smoothies. We’re not necessarily looking for amazing works of art – what we’re after is creativity, smart ideas and something that’s relevant to what we do. The judging will be done by children's author/illustrator Lauren Child, creator of Charlie and Lola and Clarice Bean. And that’s that. It’s a pretty exciting thing to have a go at – visit  www.innocentkids.co.uk/win to find out more.

Welcome back old friend

The weather is undeniably cold. Breath is visible and you can quite safely leave your bottles of Chardonnay outside the back door instead of cluttering up the fridge. So please allow us to utilise this recently vacated chiller space with a new monthly recipe for November. Some of you may remember lemon, honey and ginger from years gone by, and will hopefully be happy that it decided to come back. Warm it gently for the ultimate natural toddy, or just gulp it down like you usually do. More about it here.

Better, lower, faster

Here’s another new thing. We’ve been making our yoghurt, vanilla bean and honey recipe for years. In that time, fads have come and gone, fashions have changed and some of us have grown a little paunchier, but the recipe has stayed the same. Until now. You see, as of a few days ago, we started using a new yoghurt. We scoured the land for the best stuff and found one that tasted a little better than the old one, hiding in the Mendips. And what’s more, it’s low fat. Admittedly, we thought that if something was low fat it might taste a bit wishy-washy. But it doesn’t. It’s definitely better (we tested it on unsuspecting people and the scores were conclusive). So that’s what’s happened. We found a better ingredient and it’s better for you, especially if you got a little paunchy like us.

We’re getting very close to hitting our target of 400,000 hats, which is just as well, as they’re going to start appearing on the shelves in Sainsbury’s stores all over the place this week (see here for more on how they actually get onto the shelves). To help celebrate the arrival of our little woolly wonders we’re going to have a competition. All you have to do is take pictures of the hats and upload them to our Big Knit flickr group. We’ll then pick a winner for each of these categories – Most Creative Use Of Hat, Best Hat Ensemble, and Best Overall Hat Picture. The winners will each get a year’s supply of smoothies. Ohhhh yesssss. So please, sally forth to the shops, buy a smoothie in a hat and take a photo.

And finally...