UK's biggest knitted hat created to celebrate 20th Anniversary of The Big Knit

At 23 feet tall and 20 feet wide, the communal triumph was brought to life at Nottingham’s Albert Hall, a city famed for being the home of knitting after producing the first ever knitting machine in the 16th Century. The giant bobble hat is made up of 545 individual knitted squares and is made up of an estimated 2million yards of yarn. It marks the platinum anniversary of innocent drinks and Age UK’s partnership, who have been working together since 2003 to raise millions of pounds to support older people most in need. The knitted masterpiece comes after research shows that even before the cost of living crisis, 15% of older people in the UK were living in poverty, equating to 1.7 million people. Since 2003, through pandemics, austerity and cost of living crises, the partnership has seen tiny, knitted hats from the public placed on smoothie bottles, with innocent donating 25p for every behatted bottle bought to the Charity – an initiative that has long captured the hearts and imagination of the nation. In the last two decades, innocent and Age UK have collaboratively knitted nearly 11 million hats and raised over £3 million for the charity, which in turn has helped towards the costs of Age UK’s local and national work including its national Telephone Friendship Service and local social groups, activities and lunch clubs for older people.