Fairfield General Hospital in Bury is raising funds for a new children's A&E department, with a separate waiting area and a dedicated treatment room for children. With MedEquip4Kids they're aiming to raise £55,800 for all the paediatric medical equipment needed, including a portable ventilator to treat babies and children, a defibrillator for cardiac arrests, and ophthalmoscopes for examining children’s eyes. So far they're almost halfway to their target, and have raised over £25,000!

Red Nose Day 2013 is just around the corner, and we love this fantastic fundraising campaign by Ros Badger and Emma Mitchell. Four hand-made dolls have been lovingly created, along with clothes, jewellery, bedding and picnic food for the four friends, Maisie, Mac, Blossom and Poppy. 

We can’t resist these cute little Burundi Bears – they’re ideal stocking fillers!

You can buy one for a minimum donation of £1 and you’ll be helping to pay for the bricks to build schools in Burundi, Africa.

Just £1 buys four bricks, so the more you pay for your bear, the larger a portion of the school you’ll be contributing to! 

Refuge would to thank everyone who’s already contributed to our  ‘Bears & Squares’ campaign.

The charity has received more than 100 teddies so far, as some children’s clothes and gorgeous blanket like the one pictured here, knitted by Simply Knitting reader Sue Watson.

Fundraising is also going well, too, though we still have a long way to go to meet our £10,000 target. 

Right now, Sainsbury’s stores up and down the UK are stocked with hat-wearing innocent smoothie bottles. Did you or your knitting group supply any?

We’ve been utterly impressed by the efforts of the 54th Clifton Guides who completed 110 amazing mini hats for the campaign!

A while ago we let you know about The Big Issue’s fundraising knitting campaign that will attempt to break a Guinness World Record.

With sponsorship from Get Britain Crafting and Deramores, the homelessness charity is asking you, and anyone you can convince to join in, to pick up your knitters on Saturday 17 November to take part in ‘The Big Knitathon.’ The campaign aims to raise awareness of The Big Issue Foundation’s work and the homeless – and raise vital funds for the charity. The events will also be part of a nationwide attempt to break a Guinness World Record for the most people knitting simultaneously.

We know some of you are wondering what happened about our Refuge Knitting Design competition, so we’re thrilled to finally be able to share the results with you!

What a talented lot you are! We received some truly fantastic entries, making it very hard work for our judges when it came to choosing our winner and runners up.

Our judges were completely in agreement about our winner – Mrs Christine Norton from Chaldon, Surrey. Christine’s wonderful Mouse and Christmas Tree design is playful, festive and fun, with plenty of sparkle! 

The National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society (NRAS) has launched its latest fundraising campaign – The Knit Factor  and they'd like you to get involved!

NRAS is encouraging as many people as possible to get knitting. Whether it's a hat, scarf, jumper, or even a small knitted dog like the one shown here, send the finished masterpiece to NRAS who will photograph it and put it on its eBay shop. All money raised will go to helping those who live with rheumatoid arthritis.

We’ve been truly touched by the efforts our readers are going to for our Refuge ‘Bears & Squares’ campaign. Take  Lorna Abrahams from Bath, for example. She started knitting bears for us and just couldn’t stop!

“I started knitting a couple of years ago, and find bears a lot nicer to work on than squares (my first knitted squares never came out square!),” Lorna says. “The basic bears take me a couple of days to knit and sew up, and the crochet one (the one wearing a dress) took a couple of days longer than that.”